























































































































































































































































JIM AND PEGGY 
AT APPLE-TOP FARM 









By WALTER COLLINS O’KANE 


Jim and Peggy at Meadowbrook Farm 

Jim and Peggy at Apple-top Farm 



























Jim and Peggy 
at Apple-top Farm 


BY 

WALTER COLLINS O’KANE 

• • 

AUTHOR OF “JIM AND PEGGY AT 
MEADOWBROOK FARM,” ETC. 


WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
TAKEN BY THE AUTHOR 


% 



> > > 

O 




) 


jUeto iatK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1923 


All rights reserved 








PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



Copyright, 1923, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and printed. Published October, 1923. 




Wynkoop Hallenbeck. Crawford Co. 
Printing Headquarters 
New York 

DtC -5 1923 

/ 

©C1A7GG197 

vl 0 | 










CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Apple-Top Farm. 

PAGE 

I 

II. 

Plans . 

II 

III. 

New Arrivals. 

. 24 

U IV. 

Brush Heap and Briars. 

• 37 

^ V. 

Four-Footed Visitors. 

• 47 

u- VI. 

The Friendly Birds. 

60 

VII. 

Adventures in Catalogs .... 

• 7 i 

VIII. 

Good Ends from Small Beginnings . 

• 85 

IX. 

Glass Houses. 

. 98 

1/ X. 

Scratch Feed and Dry Mash . 

112 

XI. 

A Harvest from Tree Trunks . 

126 

XII. 

Cions and Grafting Wax .... 

• i 39 

XIII. 

The Spray Pump at Work .... 

• 154 

XIV. 

Seed Bed and Shipping Crate . 

. 168 

XV. 

The Early Garden. 

182 

XVI. 

When the Sun Is High. 

. 198 

XVII. 

New Ways for Old. 

. 212 

XVIII. 

The End of the Year. 

. 227 

























JIM AND PEGGY AT 
APPLE-TOP FARM 


CHAPTER I 

APPLE-TOP FARM 

Uncle John Harlow got up from the breakfast 
table with an eager, fidgety look in his eye, and 
stood watching Aunt Emily, who was finishing the 
breakfast dishes. 

“About ready, mother?” he asked. 

She nodded. “It won’t take me three minutes 
more,” she said. 

Uncle John walked to the door, opened it, and 
spied his son Jim racing after Peggy, who was just 
disappearing around a corner of the woodshed. 

“Come on, Jim!” he called. “Let’s hitch up!” 

Jim and his sister Peggy hurried to the stable. 
They had been waiting impatiently for half an hour. 

It was the day after their father and mother had 
come back from the place on the hill and had 
surprised them with the news that the farm up 
there was to be their new home. There had 
been no time the evening before to go and see the 







2 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

farm or even to ask many questions. It had been 
dark when Uncle John and Aunt Emily came back. 
And of course you can’t really see much of a farm 
after dark; although Peggy had proposed that they 
drive up and look at the house, anyway. 

They were going to leave the city. That much 
they had found out. And the house that they were 
to live in was the one that you pass at the top of 
the hill as you drive from Uncle David’s place 
toward Milford. They had often seen the house, 
but they’d never especially noticed what it was like. 
And they’d never guessed that this was the place 
where their father had lived when he was a boy, 
before his father went to the city. Uncle John had 
told them that the evening before. 

“Don’t remember so much about it myself,” he 
said. “My dad took us to town to live when I was 
only twelve years old.” 

“Are we honestly going to live there always?” 
Peggy demanded. 

Uncle John looked at Aunt Emily in an inquiring 
way, and she looked at him with the same sort of 
question in her eyes. 

“Well,” he declared, “ we’re going, anyhow! 
Don’t know yet about the ‘always’ part of it! Guess 
we’ll have to see about that later.” 

And then he and Aunt Emily had insisted that 
Jim and Peggy go to bed, promising to take them 
to the new place the first thing in the morning. 






APPLE-TOP FARM 


3 

Jim was reluctant to leave the others. So was 
Peggy. After they had gone upstairs they lay 
awake for a while, whispering loudly enough so that 
each could hear the other from their separate rooms. 
Downstairs there rose a steady hum of conversa- 



The Farmhouse and the Old Barn 


tion as their father and mother talked things over 
with Uncle David and Aunt Lucy. 

Now it was morning and time for the promised 
visit. 

As soon as Jim and his father harnessed Milly 
to the surrey Peggy and Aunt Emily climbed into 
the back seat and they started for the new farm. 
Across the familiar bridge, where the boards rattled 











4 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

under foot, Milly trotted, then slowly up the steep 
hill, with the harness creaking- at each step. 

Just at the crest, a halt mile or so from Uncle 
David’s Meadowbrook Farm, they drew into sight 
of a white farmhouse on the left side of the road, 
with a big, white-painted barn at the rear, connected 
with the house by a low building that looked like a 
woodshed. On the opposite side of the road, and 
somewhat nearer, there was another building, dull 
gray in color, as if it had not been painted for many 
years, as indeed it had not. 

“That barn on the right isn’t much to look at,” 
said Uncle John, “bu,t it may come in handy some 
day. 1 figure that it might make a good building for 
apple storage.” 

They turned in at a grassy driveway that led 
around the farther side of the white house. They 
stopped there and tied Milly to a tall wooden post. 
There was a hollow close to the post where other 
horses had stamped with their feet. 

Jim jumped out to hitch Milly, and Peggy fol¬ 
lowed. But Aunt Emily and Uncle John sat in the 
surrey for a few minutes, looking all about them, 
at the house, the barn and the yard—just looking 
and saying never a word. 

Peggy tried a door on the side piazza and found 
it locked. 

“Did you bring the key, mamma?” she called. 
“Come on, let’s go inside.” 









One of I he Skyscraper Trees 


moA 































APPLE-TOP FARM 


7 


“Why can’t we see the barn first?” Jim demanded. 

But they all went into the house, and looked 
through it, from room to room, upstairs and down. 
In the sitting room there was a fireplace that must 
have been four feet wide. Built in at one side of it 
was a small, iron door that Aunt Emily said was 
the opening to the old brick oven. Uncle John 
swung the door open and they looked inside, but they 
couldn’t see anything except a dark, low space walled 
in and roofed over with bricks. The kitchen was 
much like that at Uncle David’s. The stairs to 
the second floor were steep, and squeaked as you 
went up. 

“How old is the house, John?” asked Aunt Emily. 

“I don’t know. You see it wasn’t in our family 
very long. My dad bought it after he was married. 
From the looks of it, though, I should think it was 
built more than a hundred years ago.” 

They walked out into the summer kitchen. Jim 
had already gone on into the barn. He shouted 
from somewhere in that direction. “Come on out, 
dad,” he called, “there’s a cow barn, and horse 
stalls, and all kinds of things out here.” 

So they all went into the barn by the roundabout 
way that led through the woodshed, and wandered 
here and there in the big, empty place. Jim and 
Peggy climbed up into the loft and found hay there 
that had been stored but never used. 

On a wooden peg in a small room near the horse 









8 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

stalls an old set of harnesses was hanging. In an¬ 
other place there was a low wagon with iron wheels 
and on the wagon body was a barrel tank. Close to 
the tank was a pump with a long handle that stuck 
up into the air. The pump was connected to the 
barrel by an iron pipe. There was a coil of hose 
there, too, and a long rod made of bamboo, with a 
queer, round nozzle at one end. 

“That's the spray rig that they spoke of,” re¬ 
marked Uncle John. 

At one end of the barn there were big doors. 
They opened these and found themselves at the 
edge of a field. Fifteen or twenty old apple trees 
stood scattered here and there in it besides a row 
near a stone wall. Some of these trees were as tall 
as a house. In fact it would take a long ladder to 
reach to their upper limbs. Their trunks were big 
and the main limbs were long and heavy. 

To the rear of the barn there was an orchard, 
with trees planted in regular rows, extending down 
a slope toward a grassy hollow. These trees were 
smaller than the big ones scattered over the field, 
but all of them were two or three times as tall as 
Uncle John. On the farther side of the hollow there 
was another orchard where the trees were quite 
small. 

When they came back from the hollow they went 
through the barn, out of a small door at the other 
end, over a low, stone wall and into another block 



APPLE-TOP FARM 


9 

of trees standing in straight, even rows. There 
were perhaps forty of these. A few, nearest the 
barn, had smooth bark and slender branches and 
glossy dark leaves. Uncle John said that they were 
sour cherry trees. 

“I like sweet cherries,” objected Peggy. 



Jim and Peggy 


"Yes, but the sour cherries are the kind to raise 
for market,” Aunt Emily explained. 

Close by there were a dozen or more small trees 
with low, rather flat tops. Some fruit from these 
was scattered here and there on the ground—small, 
dark-blue plums. The rest of the trees in this block 
were of medium size and were different from any 




























IO JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

that they had seen so far. Their branches began 
only two feet or so from the ground, and their 
leaves were slender and pointed. It was easy to tell 
what they were, even if you didn’t know beforehand 
from the appearance of the tree, for there was fruit 
on the branches here and there—fuzzy, hard 
peaches, just beginning to show pinkish color. 

Near a fence next to the road there were two or 
three long rows of blackberry and raspberry bushes. 
The ground between them and the peach trees was 
grown up to tall weeds. Uncle John said that it had 
been a garden. 

They came back to the house then and sat on the 
side piazza, looking about at the yard and across 
a tree-filled valley to distant hills. 

“What shall we call the place?” asked Aunt 
Emily. 

They tried various names. But some of them 
didn’t seem to fit and others were just like farm 
names that they had heard before. 

“Well, it’s apples, for one thing,” said Uncle 
John. “That’s the principal crop that the farm is 
going to raise. Apple—Apple- What else?” 

“It’s a farm on a hill-top,” mused Aunt Emily. 
“Hill—top-” 

“I know!” said Peggy. “Let’s call it Apple-top 
Farm!” 

So Apple-top Farm it was. 





CHAPTER II 


PLANS 

After the farm had been given its new name 
Aunt Emily and Peggy went back into the house to 
look over the rooms once more, to plan where beds 
and chairs and tables should go, and to inspect the 
big kitchen again. But Jim and his father remained 
on the piazza, where they could look out toward the 
garden and the peach orchard and across the slopes 
toward the distant hills. 

“Those old apple trees back there in the hayfield 
are regular skyscrapers, aren’t they?” remarked 
Uncle John. “Must be forty or fifty feet high! 
Well, that’ll be one of our jobs, Jim. We’ll tackle 
those trees a bit and see if we can’t get them down 
somewhere nearer the ground.” 

“How can you do that”—asked Jim—“get them 
down nearer the ground?” 

“Why, cut off some of the highest limbs and en¬ 
courage the tree to send out new branches lower 
down. It wouldn’t do to cut the branches off all at 
once. But we can do it a little at a time. If you do 
that you can have a tree after a while that’s shapely 
and all right.” 





12 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Uncle John got up, found a stick lying near, took 
out his knife, and began to cut and shape one end of 
it, as if it were a branch of an apple tree that needed 
pruning. 

“Probably we’ll want to graft over some of the 
trees,” he continued. “Most likely part of them are 
not the best varieties. It won’t be hard to do that 
after we cut off the high limbs.” 

Jim wanted to find out how you graft trees, but 
his father went on talking and there wasn’t any 
chance. 

“Lots of the big old trees around this section 
are poor fruit that nobody would be willing to buy. 
But they can be grafted over, and in a few years 
they make profitable trees.” 

“Are we going to live here for a good many 
years?” asked Jim. 

His father started to answer, but stopped and 
laughed in an uncertain way. 

“That’s another story,” he declared. “Wait till 
your mother and Peggy come out again, and we’ll 
talk about that. 

“Come on,” he invited, “let’s go look at the old 
barn on the other side of the road.” 

They walked along the- grassy driveway that 
curved past the piazza steps and out into the high¬ 
way. As they turned into the road a black-and- 
white spotted dog came racing toward them. It 
was dag, from Meadowbrook Farm. He had 



7 here IV as a Grindstone Near the Barn 






PLANS 


i5 


missed them and had gone to find them, following 
the tracks of the horse and surrey along the road. 
When he joined them he barked and jumped about 
as if he had not seen them for weeks. 

They found the old barn open; in fact the two 
big sliding doors that faced the road were out of 
order and couldn’t be closed. Inside there were 
wisps of hay here and there on the floor, and over¬ 
head a great lot of cobwebs and a row of mud nests 
plastered against the rafters. 

The broad space that you entered through the 
sliding doors ended in another pair of doors. These 
were on hinges and were shut. Uncle John un¬ 
latched them and swung them open. Outside there 
was an embankment that led down to the ground be¬ 
low. Because of the slope of the land the field at 
the back was much lower than the ground at the 
front. 

Downstairs they found a big cellar with an 
earth floor. Tall posts supported the beams of the 
first story, above. Uncle John reached up as high 
as he could alongside one of the posts but could not 
quite touch its top. 

'‘This is a good cellar,” he remarked. “Some 
time, Jim, if we have good luck, we’ll make an apple 
storage out of this. The stone walls are good, and 
you can drive right in at the rear there. Upstairs 
there’s plenty of room to store empty barrels and 
fix up a place to pack boxes. ’Twouldn’t cost 


16 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

much to turn this into a pretty fair storage 
house.” 

Across the road from the old barn was the hay- 
field where the skyscraper apple trees stood. They 
climbed oyer the stone wall, walked across the field 
toward the grassy hollow at its rear margin, and 
stopped at the little run that wandered along in the 
hollow. 

“Let’s have a look at the spring,” suggested Uncle 
John. 

The water in the run came from a spot several 
yards beyond a low bridge. There were two or 
three boards level with the grass. Beneath these 
was a half barrel sunk in the ground. This was 
full of water, which poured in a tiny stream through 
a hole bored in the barrel near the top. For a space 
below the barrel the water was hidden by a mat of 
green plants. Uncle John said that these were 
watercress. “Probably we can sell some of this 
cress next year,” he said. 

He walked down the grassy run for a distance 
and called back to Jim to stand beside the barrel. 

“It can be done all right,” he said, when he came 
back. 

“What done?” asked Jim. 

“Get a water supply for the house. There seems 
to be fall enough to run a ram. You know what they 
are, Jim. One like your Uncle David’s at Meadow- 
brook Farm. Of course it’s a good ways up to the 


PLANS 



17 

house, but the flow is pretty strong and I know 
the spring never goes dry. Seems to me there was 
some talk about using this spring for a water supply 
when I used to live here, but it’s too long ago for me 


The Well Near the House 

to remember much about it. That will be another 
thing that we can think of for some time in the 
future.’" 

“Can we water the garden with it?” asked 
Jim. 

Uncle John shook his head. “That’s another 



18 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

story/’ he said. He looked up the slope toward the 
house. “I don’t know whether we’ll need a water 
supply for the garden or not. If we do, though, a 
ram would hardly take care of it. Maybe we’ll 
want to put in a gasoline engine, instead.” 

“There’s a well up there by the house,” suggested 
Jim. 

“Yes, I know. But that well gets low in summer. 
There’s hardly enough water in it to supply the 
stock. We used to drive them down here to the run 
to water them, sometimes. Besides, I’m not sure 
that the water in the well up there is really good to 
use in the house. It’s pretty close to the barn, and 
it’s just a dug well. Guess it’s all right for some 
purposes, but I think we’ll use this spring for drink¬ 
ing water.” 

Uncle John found a spot to his liking on the grassy 
slope above the spring and sat down. Jim followed. 
Overhead a big bird circled in broad sweeps—some 
sort of a hawk. But Uncle John’s eyes and mind 
were on the young orchard that extended along the 
slopes across the hollow from the place where they 
sat. 

“Those are good young trees,” he speculated. 
“Said to be nine years old and ought to be coming 
into bearing. But they haven’t been taken care of. 
In a few years they’ll make a nice orchard. That 
block ought to be enlarged and take in the rest of 
the slope. There’s room there for a hundred more 


PLANS 



19 

trees at least. And the blanks ought to be filled. 
You see, some of them have died.” 

To the left of the young orchard and farther 
down along the spring run there was an area of 
rough ground, covered with low bushes. Uncle 
John said that nearly all of that space was filled with 


The Orchard with the Wire Fence Around It 

blueberry bushes. They grew wild there. When he 
was a boy that was the place where they picked all 
their blueberries—many quarts of them. The patch 
ought to be all right still. That would be another 
place from which they could make sales of a crop 
that grew of its own accord—just like the water¬ 


cress. 





20 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

There was still another crop like that on the farm. 
The rough pasture back of the old barn on the 
farther side of the highway was full of blackberry 
bushes. 

On the slope above the spring was the orchard of 
medium-size trees that they had visited earlier. 
There was a wire fence all around this block, and an 
old chicken house at one side. 

“We’ll have our chickens in there, I suppose,” 
said Uncle John. “That’s what that orchard was 
fenced for. It isn’t a very big range, though, and 
we couldn’t have a large number in a space that size. 
That is, the young stock, I mean.” 

He looked across at the slopes opposite, where 
the young orchard had been planted. 

‘‘That’s really the right place, over there,” he 
said. “There is plenty of room, and it’s far enough 
away from the garden so that the plants wouldn’t 
be hurt by the chickens. The land slopes the right 
way, too.” 

He looked back again at the fenced-in space 
behind them. 

“Of course it’s farther to go over here to look 
after them. And there’d be the question of water. 
That would be all right if we put in a gasoline engine 
some time. We could run a pipe there easily 
enough.” 

He thought it over further. 

“We might use the rough pasture across the road 


PLANS 


21 


from the house. The trouble is that the ground isn’t 
suitable. Besides I’d rather have the chickens 

among the apple trees- Well, we'll see about 

that, later.” 

They went back presently and around the house 
to the piazza. Aunt Emily and Peggy were sitting 



Some of the Trees Were of Medium Size 


on the steps. Jim joined them, but Uncle John 
walked through the gate into the peach orchard and 
looked over some of the trees carefully, from top 
to bottom. After a time he returned and sat down 
in the doorway where he could use the doorframe 
for a chair back to lean against. 



22 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Well, mother,” he said, “what do you think?” 

“It looks good, John,” she answered quietly. 

Uncle John took out his knife, found the stick he 
had been whittling, and set to work cutting and 
shaping it again. 

“When are we going to come here to live?” de¬ 
manded Peggy. 

Uncle John stopped his whittling and put away 
his knife. 

“Well, Pll tell you what our plans are,” he said. 
“We’ve leased this farm until a year from this 
coming December. It will take two months or so 
before we can arrange things in my work in the 
city so as to leave it. That will make it about Sep¬ 
tember. So we figure on moving in time for you 
youngsters to enter school here.” 

“At the same school that Horace and Jane go to?” 

“Yes. That’s the one.” 

“But won’t we stay here more than a year?” 

“I think so. I think we’ll stay for good. Our 
lease gives us the privilege of buying the place at 
any time up to December of next year.” 

Uncle John paused and looked away across the 
hills. 

“You see, it’s this way,” he continued. “This 
farm ought to make us a good living and a nice place 
to live. These fruit trees haven’t a great deal of 
fruit on them this year. What they have goes to 
us. By proper care and attention we ought to be 


PLANS 


23 


able to make them do better another year. They’ve 
been neglected. Even at that they’ve been bearing 
pretty well most years, so your Uncle David says. 
Those rows of berry bushes over there need pruning. 
They ought to do well again. Then there’s the 
garden. That’s a good location for a garden out 
there. The land’s early and it works up well. It 
used to be counted one of the best gardens anywhere 
hereabouts. We think that we can sell quite a lot 
of vegetables in Milford, aside from what we’ll use 
at home.” 

“We can sell blueberries,” suggested Jim. 

‘‘Yes. You and Peggy might see what you can do 
with them. Then we think we’ll start in with a 
good lot of chickens, and have them for an extra 
business, along with the fruits and vegetables.” 

Uncle John was silent again. 

“I think we can make it go,” he concluded. “But 
it’s been a long time since I lived in the country. I 
want us to try it first for a year, and see how we 
come out. If it turns out all right and we find that 
we can make our living here, we’ll buy it and make 
it our home for good.” 


CHAPTER III 


NEW ARRIVALS 

It was the second week in September when they 
moved to Apple-top Farm. School was to begin 
at the close of the month, several days after it began 
in the city. The later date gave the boys and girls 
on the farms more time to help with fall work at 
home. 

For Jim and Peggy the opening of the country 
school was an adventure to look forward to. But 

t 

it came long before the work of getting settled in 
the new place was more than fairly started. There 
were a hundred things to do. They discovered that 
they were sorry to miss these new tasks and events. 
Each afternoon when they came back from school 
there was something new to look at or to think about. 
Saturdays were full, from daylight to dark. 

For the first two weeks Uncle John borrowed a 
horse from Uncle David at Meadowbrook Farm. 
Presently Uncle David, while visiting a farm near 
by, found there a horse for sale that he thought 
would do well for the people at Apple-top. So the 
next afternoon, when Jim and Peggy came home, 
they saw their father leading out to the barn a 

24 


NEW ARRIVALS 25 

stocky animal with a speckled brown coat and a 
white “stocking” on his left hind foot Aunt Emily 
said that he was just the color of Scotch heather 
cloth and that he ought to be called Scotty or Mac, 
but Uncle John said that his name was Juniper. 



Cherry 


Aunt Emily at once shortened it to June, which 
Uncle John declared sounded like a rose or a school¬ 
girl and not like a horse. Juniper himself appeared 
to be too good-humored to care what he was called. 

A few days later there was another newcomer in 
the barn: a red-coated cow with a white star on her 
forehead. Her name proved to be Cherry. She 




26 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE TOP FARM 

seemed to be about to fly into a panic the first day 
in her new quarters, but the next morning had 
settled down as if she had been there all her life. 

A dozen hens followed. When spring came, Aunt 
Emily said, they would start a real flock with a lot 
of baby chicks, or possibly would buy an incubator 
and hatch their own. But for the fall and winter 
there would be only these hens. The dozen ought to 
supply the family with eggs to eat and possibly a 
few once in a while to sell. 

An important arrival followed the hens. At the 
Reynolds farm, down the road beyond Uncle 
David’s place, there were four half-grown dogs, 
cousins of Spot and Tag that Jim and Peggy had 
played with through the past year. One of these 
dogs was sent up to Apple-top Farm as a present. 
It took a week to name him. Each person in the 
family had a different suggestion to make. Finally, 
Aunt Emily settled the matter by calling him Gallup, 
because he spent much of his time running about 
here and there as fast as he could go, his ears flop¬ 
ping and his nose near the ground. 

Early on Saturday afternoon a stranger drove 
into the yard and hitched his horse to the post near 
the side piazza. He proved to be an agent for a 
nursery company selling young fruit trees to set 
out. 

Uncle John talked with him while Jim stood near 
by and listened. 


NEW ARRIVALS 



27 

“Guess there isn’t much chance of selling trees 
to us this year,” said Uncle John. “I’d like to set 
some out. Wouldn’t mind planting two or three 
hundred. But we’re not sure yet that we’ll stay on 
this place. Can’t tell until this time next year.” 


Gallup 

“You’ll keep it, all right,” declared the agent. 
“It’s a good fruit farm. You won’t find any better 
in this section.” 

He talked with them a few minutes longer and 
finally suggested that they order just a few trees 
to set out in the “blanks” in the young orchard—the 
places in the rows where trees had died and never 
had been replaced. They all walked over to the 


28 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

orchard and counted the blanks. There were 
seventeen. 

“All right,” said Uncle John. “We’ll take a 
chance on it that far. Don’t like to let a year go 
by without planting, even if some other fellow gets 
the benefit of it.” 

“How about varieties?” asked the agent. 

“These are all Baldwins in this orchard,” said 
Uncle John. “That’s the kind to send. We wouldn’t 
want to mix in other varieties. There are early 
apples of several kinds around the house; enough 
for home use. But over here this block is intended 
to be a commercial orchard, and I think it’s best to 
stick to staple kinds and plant them in solid rows.” 

“What do you mean— solid rows’?” asked Jim. 

“Each row all one variety,” explained Uncle John. 
“Or even a whole block all one kind. You can do 
your spraying better that way because they all come 
out in leaf at the same time and they all bloom at 
once. When you pick the fruit you have an ad¬ 
vantage, too, because they’re all ready to pick at 
the same time, and you don’t have different sorts to 
keep separate. Sometimes they plant first one row 
of one kind then another row of another kind, then 
the third row the same as the first, and so on. And 
sometimes they’ll divide a whole block into three 
or four sections and plant one kind in each. Over 
here they’re all Baldwins in the whole block. That’s 
because the Baldwin is considered a safe, reliable 



<0 

£ 

£ 

a 

o 

Q 

o 


-a 

s 

o 

CQ 

?*> 

-a 

r 

t>. 













































NEW ARRIVALS 


3i 


apple in this part of the country, and always finds a 
good sale. In other states they’d probably stick to 
something else—Ben Davis, maybe, or Rome or 
Jonathan.” 

“How many kinds of apples are there?” Jim 
asked. 

Uncle John turned to the tree agent. “What 
would you say?” he queried. 

“Goodness knows,” he laughed. “We must have 
thirty more in our catalog, and I suppose there are 
a hundred or two besides those.” 

“Not all of them are planted much,” explained 
Uncle John to Jim. “There are a good many varie¬ 
ties that you seldom see. They’re mostly for home 
use or to please some one’s special fancy. Then 
there are nurserymen that advertise special varieties 
that they have originated and are trying to build up 
a sale for.” 

“How do they ‘originate’ them?” asked Jim. 

“Well,” said Uncle John, “that’s a whole story 
in itself. One of these times when we have a spare 
evening, we’ll talk about that. There’s a book at the 
house that tells about it.” 

A few weeks later a bundle arrived from the 
nursery. Old Eben, who delivered the mail on the 
route, brought it and waited at the box in front of 
the house while Peggy went out to get it. He ex¬ 
plained that he thought it ought not to stay outside 
in the sun. 



32 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

It seemed like a very small bundle, considering 
that it was supposed to contain seventeen trees. 
There was packing about the roots, with burlap 
wrapped and tied over it. This was moist. You 
could see wet moss by looking under a fold of the 
burlap. The whole bundle was about four or five 
feet long. The upper part was wrapped with tough 
strands that looked like dried grass. There were no 
leaves to be seen—only bare stems and twigs. 

After dinner Uncle John took a spade and empty 
pail and started with Jim and Peggy for the orchard 
across the brook. Jim carried the bundle of trees, 
still tightly wrapped and tied, and Peggy brought 
a pair of small pruning shears, with a short, broad 
blade and a spring under the handle to keep them 
open except when you squeezed them shut. 

At the brook Uncle John filled the pail with water. 
He dipped the lower end of the bundle of trees into 
the brook, also soaking the burlap and the packing, 
so that a stream of water ran out from it when he 
lifted it out. 

They went first to one of the places where a tree 
was to be planted. Uncle John had Jim go a little 
way off along the row of trees and sight down the 
row across the space where the new tree was to 
stand. Peggy did the same thing along the row run¬ 
ning at right angles. Then Uncle John stood his 
spade up and moved it about until it was just in line 
with both of the rows. 


NEW ARRIVALS 


33 


At that point he dug a hole, making it about two 
feet across and a foot or more deep. It seemed like 
a ridiculously large hole for so small a tree—as if 
one were going to put on a shoe that was as big as 
a bushel basket. But Uncle John said that the roots 
of the little tree must have loose ground to grow in 
so that they could easily spread out. As Uncle John 
dug he made two piles of earth, at one side the 
brown, rich-looking soil from the top and at the 
other the yellowish soil from the bottom of the hole. 
The first pile, he said, was rich earth, with plenty 
of plant food in it, and would be good to place 
around the roots of the tree. 

Then he opened the bundle, took out a tree, and 
carefully put the moss and burlap back over the rest, 
to keep them moist. The roots were a mat of fine, 
little strands. He had Peggy hold the tree upright 
in the center of the hole. Then he and Jim shoveled 
in the top soil, working the earth in around the roots 
with their hands. When they had the hole half filled 
Uncle John pressed the earth down with his foot, 
bearing his whole weight on it. Next they shoveled 
in the yellowish soil. As they scraped in the last 
of it Uncle John kept stamping it with his foot. 

Last of all he emptied the whole bucket of water 
on the earth that they had filled in, pouring it slowly 
so that it might have plenty of time to sink in. 

When the tree was in place Uncle John took the 
pruning shears and cut off almost all of the slender 


34 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

branches. One, in the center, the one that ran most 
nearly straight up, he left in place. But the side 
ones he cut off about two or three inches from the 
main stem. 

Peggy wanted to know why he did this. 



Pruning the Top of a Young Tree 


“First,” said Uncle John, “it’s because the tree 
would have too much top for its roots, when it starts 
growing next spring, unless we did this. You know, 
when they dig it up in the nursery they’re bound to 
break off a lot of the little rootlets. They can’t help 
it. So by pruning it this way we make the upper 








NEW ARRIVALS 


35 

part correspond better to the roots. Then we want 
our tree to send out a low framework of branches, 
so that it will head not too far from the ground. 
When we cut off these side twigs we make the buds 
start up on the stub that's left, and as those grow 
they'll make branches later. Then we’ll have a tree 
that won’t grow away up toward the sky, as some 
trees do. We can spray it and pick the fruit with¬ 
out climbing up on a tall ladder.” 

Each of the other little trees they planted in the 
same way. Each time Uncle John went down the 
slope to the brook and carried up a full pail of water. 
“Now,” he said, “those trees can’t complain that 
they haven’t had a good drink.” 

When they finished and walked back to the house 
they found a man sitting in a buggy in the yard, 
waiting to see Uncle John. The two of them talked 
together a few minutes and then started out through 
the orchard back of the barn. Half an hour later 
they came back and the visitor, drove away. Uncle 
John went into the house to talk with Aunt Emily 
and after a time walked down to see Uncle David. 

At supper he told Jim and Peggy what it was 
about. 

“We’ve sold our apple crop,” he said. “Sold it 
on the trees. The man that was here was a buyer. 
He furnishes the barrels and does the picking, and 
he pays us so much a barrel for the crop, just as 
it is.” 


36 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Why don’t we pick them?” asked Peggy. 

“Next year we will. But this year it would be 
hard to arrange. Beginning Monday I’m ^oing to 
be working for your Uncle David all this fall. That 
will take a good deal of my time, and won’t leave 
much for a job such as apple-picking. When next 
season comes we’ll have things running in regular 
order and we’ll take care of our own crop.” 

“Does he pay us much for the apples?” asked Jim. 

“Two dollars a barrel. He thinks that perhaps 
there will be seventy-five barrels.” 

“That makes lots of money, doesn’t it?” remarked 
Jim. 

“Not when you come to buy equipment and sup¬ 
plies. But it will help. This farm ought to do a 
good deal more than that; maybe two hundred 
barrels, with the trees that are in bearing now. Per¬ 
haps even more than that. We’ll make it do its part, 
in time.” 


CHAPTER IV 


BRUSH HEAP AND BRIARS 

A few days after the young trees had been set 
out Uncle John went to Milford one afternoon for 
supplies. His list of errands was a long one. In 
fact it seemed as if there were always at least a 
dozen different things needed from the stores in 
town, just as there were always various tasks that 
needed to be done around the farm. 

That was part of the job of getting started. 
Later, when the farm was in running order, the er¬ 
rands to be taken care of at Milford would grow less 
in number, because the farm would accumulate its 
own stock of supplies: nails, screws, hammers, saws, 
hoes, rakes, brushes, and a hundred other items. 
Later, too, the work would grow more systematic 
and would seem less crowded, although Apple-top, 
like every other farm, would always be a busy place 
where you would have plenty to do if you wished to 
keep it moving and in good order. 

With his other purchases Uncle John brought 
home a can of tar paint. From Uncle David that 
evening he borrowed an extra pair of nippers, like 

37 


38 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

the pair that he’d used in pruning the young apple 
trees and a small saw with a narrow, curved blade. 

“To-morrow’s Saturday,” he remarked to Jim and 
Peggy. “Let’s tackle two or three of those old sky¬ 
scraper apple trees and see what we can make of 
them.” 

“But you said you wouldn’t fix up the old trees 



One Kind of Pruning Saw 


until you knew whether we’d stay on the place!” 
objected Aunt Emily. 

“Yes, I know. That’s what I said,” laughed 
Uncle John. “But we’re going to do only a few of 
them. Just three or four near the house. It doesn’t 
seem right, somehow, to let them all go. I hate to 
see them the way they are. 

“Besides,” he added, “if we are going to keep 




BRUSH HEAP AND BRIARS 39 

Apple-top Farm we don’t want to lose too much time 
making it shipshape.” 

“Well, you wouldn’t be contented unless you were 
working at it,” declared Aunt Emily. 

In the morning Uncle John brought a long ladder 
from the barn and stood it up in a tree in the hayfield 
that extended westward from the house. Jim and 
Peggy carried out the can of tar paint, a wide brush, 
the pruning nippers, and the curved saw. 

Uncle John walked around the tree, looking at it 
from different sides. He shook his head. 

“Might as well go right at those middle' limbs,” 
he said. “You see, there are three of them that run 
almost straight up and haven’t any side branches 
until they get up thirty feet or more. Don’t have 
many branches even then. You can’t take care of 
fruit on limbs like that.” 

The ladder reached only to the middle part of the 
high limbs. Uncle John adjusted it carefully and 
tried to see that it stood securely. Then he took the 
saw and climbed up. Just above the lowest side 
branch of one of the tall limbs he began his cut. 
First he sawed into the limb from the under side as 
far as he could, until the saw began to bind because 
the weight of the limb closed the cut. Then he 
sawed from the upper side, doing it carefully so that 
the two cuts would meet. 

Presently the limb began to sag. Uncle John 
stepped off the ladder into a crotch of one of the 


40 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

other limbs, from which he could just manage to 
reach with the saw and give it a few more strokes. 
Suddenly the limb snapped and fell through the 
twigs and branches to the ground. A smooth sur¬ 
face was left, where it had been cut off. 

“That makes a good, clean stub,” called Uncle 
John. “If you start first on the under side and then 
finish on the upper the limb won’t split away. Some¬ 
times people don’t do that and they make a bad, 
ragged scar. Rot gets in and maybe the part of the 
limb that’s left dies.” 

The two other tall limbs followed the first. With 
each one Uncle John selected a place for his cut 
‘where there were side branches just below. These, 
he explained, would grow larger, when the tall, up¬ 
right limb beyond was out of the way. The tree 
would have a chance to make a low, spreading head 
instead of a tall, ungainly one. 

When the sawing was finished Uncle John carried 
the tar paint and brush up the ladder and carefully 
painted each bare stub. 

“If you keep out moisture,” he said, “the cuts will 
probably heal over. The bark at the edge of the cut 
will have a tendency to grow out ov.er it. Some¬ 
times it won’t entirely cover it on big stubs like these, 
but often it will, in time, provided there’s a side 
branch or a twig or even a bud close to the cut to 
help feed the bark and make it grow.” 

There was another limb, lower down, near the 


BRUSH HEAP AND BRIARS 


4i 


center of the tree, that Uncle John decided to take 
out. It interfered with neighboring branches, he 
said, and should not be there. If it were out of the 
way the tree would be more open in the middle, 
which was another quality that it needed. So he cut 
out that limb, back to the main body of the tree, not 



The Stub Left IVhen a Limb is Not Rightly Cut 

leaving any side branch. “That’s enough limbs to 
saw off just now,” he concluded. “There are three 
or four others to come off later.” 

“Why not do them now?” asked Peggy. 

“It isn’t best to cut off so many all at once,” said 
Uncle John. “It throws the tree out of balance too 
much. You see, we don’t touch the roots any. They 
are just as numerous as they were. If we cut off too 



42 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

many limbs there will be so many roots in proportion 
to the top next spring that the tree will make a bad 
growth of long twigs and not do well at all. These 
other limbs we can take off some other year, if we're 
here." 

With his pocketknife he next trimmed off a dozen 
or more long, slender shoots that grew straight up 
from the main body of the tree. Water sprouts, he 
called them. They were of no value, he explained, 
and ought to be trimmed off close as soon as they 
started. Such sprouts, starting when the tree was 
small, might have developed into good limbs, but 
now they would never be of any use. 

Two more of the big apple trees were remodeled 
in the same fashion as the first one. That made 
enough climbing and sawing for one day, and by 
then it was dinner time. Jim carried the saw and 
paint can back to the house. Peggy carried the 
nippers. 

“What are we going to use these for?" she asked. 

“Going to use them on the briar patch," said her 
father. 

So, when dinner was over they paid a visit to the 
long rows of blackberry and raspberry bushes along¬ 
side the garden. But first Uncle John put on an old 
pair of gloves, and found another pair that Jim and 
Peggy could divide between them. 

Trimming a berry patch looked to be a very differ¬ 
ent job from prunning an apple tree, and so it was. 


BRUSH HEAP AND BRIARS 


43 



The task here was to cut out all the old canes or 
shoots, leaving only those that had grown the past 
summer. 

“You see,” said Uncle John, “a berry bush sends 
up some new shoots every year from the roots. The 
second year after a new shoot comes up is the best 


If the Cut Is Rightly Made It Heals Over 


year for fruit on it. The first year it’s doing its 
growing, and doesn’t have time to bear blossoms and 
fruit. By the time the third year comes around it 
is past its prime and won’t do as well as it did the 
second season. So we want to cut ofif the old shoots 
close to the ground, and get them out of the way. 
Then the roots can put their strength into making 
fruit on the shoots that we leave and sending up 



44 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

other new shoots for the following year. That’s 
what we’ll do every season. Always prune out the 
old stalks. Then we’ll have lots of good berries.” 

It was prickly business. Uncle John did most of 
the cutting, while Jim helped now and then. Peggy 
carried the pruned shoots out into an open space 
where there had been a garden. She piled them up 
there, to be burned when they were dry. They 
didn’t have time enough to finish the patch that 
afternoon and besides it was such a scratchy task 
that Uncle John decided to stop after they’d finished 
one row. 

“We’ll do the grapevines,” he said, “and then it 
will be time for chores.” 

There was only one short row of the grapes. 
Along this row two wires were stretched, the lower 
one about eighteen inches from the ground, the 
upper one two feet higher. The wires were fastened 
to posts at each end of the row, and the vines were 
partly tied to the wires, partly lying on the ground. 
Uncle John straightened out the vines and trimmed 
them so as to leave on each separate vine a pair of 
strong shoots for the lower wire and a pair for the 
upper. Peggy went to the tool house and brought 
some stout twine. With this they tied the vines to 
their supports, arranging them so that there was a 
shoot extending each way along each wire. 

“How about the peach trees?” asked Peggy, as 
they stood looking at the results of their work. 


BRUSH HEAP AND BRIARS 45 

“They’re different,” said Uncle John. “We don’t 
try to prune them as we would those old apple trees. 
They’re younger, anyhow. If a limb breaks we’ll 
take it out. But we’ll not make any wholesale job 
of it. 



Berry Bushes that Have Been Pruned 


“You know,” he added, “a peach orchard isn’t 
supposed to grow as long as an apple orchard. A 
peach tree gets old faster. So you don’t try to keep 
them in working order as long.” 

“How old does an apple tree grow?” asked Jim. 

“What do you guess?” said Uncle John. 

“Well,” speculated Peggy, “a turtle grows to be 
a thousand years old. And an apple tree’s bigger 
than a turtle.” 






46 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“How about an elephant?” demanded Jim. 

“Guess you can’t go entirely by size,” laughed 
Uncle John. “A horse is bigger than we are, but he 
doesn’t live as long. Of course the biggest trees 
in the world happen to be the oldest ones, the red¬ 
woods out in California. You know they say they 
are three thousand years old, some of them. But 
about apple trees, they’re often good, productive 
trees when they’re sixty years old or more, and 
sometimes they live to be a hundred.” 

“Do you suppose those that we pruned were as old 
as that?” asked Peggy. 

“They’re hardly a hundred. But I think they’re 
getting on in that direction. Probably they’re over 
sixty. They’ve borne lots of fruit in their time. 
They’ve earned their way.” 


CHAPTER V 


FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 

Uncle John was rummaging about in the barn 
and the tool house. Something that he was in search 
of seemed to have disappeared, as if it had grown 
wings and flown away. 

He went to the door leading into the kitchen. 

“Say, Jim/’ he called, “have you seen anything 
of some pieces of wire screen?” 

Jim came out from the dining room, where he was 
finishing dinner. 

“What kind of screen?” he asked. 

“Why, just plain wire screen, like what we used 
to have tacked over our cellar windows in town. 
There were several squares of it somewhere in the 
barn, I thought.” 

“I know,” nodded Jim. “I took it out to the hen¬ 
house to make coops for chickens.” 

“Well, we can use some coarser wire for that. 
I want this for tree protectors.” 

Peggy had heard the discussion and now joined 
them. 

“It’s for the little trees, isn’t it?” she said. “I saw 
a picture of them in a fruit magazine.” 

47 


48 JIM AND FEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Protectors,” commented Jim. “What for?” 

“He’ll see,” answered Peggy. “Won’t he, 
daddy?” 

“Oh, shucks!” objected Jim. “I’ll bet I know, 
too.” 

They walked over to the henhouse and Jim 
brought out the pieces of wire screen. Uncle John 
had a pair of heavy shears with him, stout enough 
to cut tin. With these he cut the wire screen into 
sections about twelve inches wide by fifteen inches 
long. Some were a little shorter because the wire 
was in odd pieces. Jim carried the shears and the 
left-over pieces to the tool house. 

Taking the wire sections along they all went to 
the orchard beyond the spring, the place where they 
had set out the young apple trees to till in spaces 
where other trees had died. 

“Here’s the reason we’re going to use protectors 
on these little trees,” said Uncle John. He stooped 
down and pointed out a scar on the trunk of one 
of the older trees, near the ground. Looking 
closely you could see that the bark had been gnawed 
off fully a third of the way around the tree. The 
scar was an old one, as if it had been made a year 
or more before. 

“That’s just what I meant!” declared Peggy. 
“Protectors are to keep rabbits from gnawing 
trees.” 

“Rabbits, sometimes. That’s right,” said Uncle 


FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 


49 

John. “But often it’s mice. That’s what did the 
gnawing this time, I think. Look closely. See the 
little, tiny teeth marks?” 

Jim and Peggy got down on their hands and 
knees and examined the scar. 



The Work of Mice 


“Do they ever kill a tree?” asked Jim. 

“Often,” said Uncle John. “Especially young 
trees. If they gnaw the bark all the way around, 
the tree will die because there won’t be any way for 
the sap to get up to the branches and leaves.” 

“Why not?” 




50 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“I read about that, too,” interrupted Peggy. 
“The sap goes up in the bark. The trunk inside 
doesn’t have any sap in it. That is, not much, any¬ 
how. Not what the tree has to have.” 

“Most likely,” suggested Uncle John, “the reason 
there are blanks in this orchard, is because mice or 
rabbits killed some of the trees. We don’t want to 
let them kill the trees that we have set out in place 
of the dead ones.” 

He took a section of the wire and bent it so that 
it had the shape of a cylinder. This he slipped 
around the trunk of one of the little trees, bringing 
the edges together and lapping them after he had it 
on. It made a sort of tall collar around the tree. 
Uncle John pushed the collar firmly against the 
ground. 

“Can’t mice climb up over the wire?” asked Jim. 

“They can, but they won’t,” said Peggy. “I 
read about that, too, in the magazine.” 

“Once in a while they do, though,” said her 
father. “Rabbits will stand up and eat the bark 
above the wire sometimes. But usually they let it 
alone, and you can count on it that the tree will 
likely come through the winter all right.” 

“Is it just in winter that they gnaw trees?” asked 
Peggy. 

“Sure!” declared Jim. “I know about that. They 
eat garden stuff and grass and things in summer.” 

“Mice don’t eat grass!” 


FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 51 

“Well, they have plenty of other things in 
summer.” 

They examined other trees near by and found two 
or three more scars. 



A Wire Tree Protector 

“What can you use if you haven’t any wire? 
asked Peggy. 

“Some people use tarred paper,” answered her 
father. “They cut it in sections like this wire screen 
and tie it around the trunk. Some use thin sections 
of wood that are made for the purpose, wood 



52 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

veneer. Sometimes a man just takes old newspapers 
and wraps them around the trunk: several thick¬ 
nesses of them. Paper and wood veneer must be 
taken off in summer, because they don’t give the 
bark of the tree a chance to have sunlight as it 
should. 

‘‘There’s one thing about these other protectors, 
though,” he added. “You can leave them on 
through spring, up to a certain time, and keep borers 
out of the trunk.” 

“Worms and things?” 

“Yes, the borer that gets into the trunks of apple 
trees. The round-headed borer, they call it. As I 
understand it, there’s a beetle that lays eggs on the 
trunk near the ground, and the grubs come from 
these eggs. If you have protectors on while the 
beetles are around, they can’t get at the tree to lay 
their eggs—not at the place they want. The grubs 
do lots of damage to young trees sometimes. They 
kill a good many.” 

“Won’t our wire do?” 

“No, it’s too coarse. The beetles could crawl 
right through it. You can use fine wire if you like. 
Some people do.” 

There had been a frost that morning. The 
ground had been white when they got up. Uncle 
John pointed to three or four tall trees standing 
along the stone wall at the farther side of the field 
where the young orchard was planted. 



FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 


53 

“Why don’t you two go and gather hickory 
nuts/’ he suggested, “while I finish fixing these 
trees? I’ve got some other jobs to do just now, 
too.” 

Jim and Peggy went back to the barn for a 
basket. When they reached the hickory trees they 
found some nuts scattered here and there in the 
grass, but there were not enough to fill the basket 
more than half full. 

As they hunted about a noise began, high over 
their head, a sort of jerky bark with a queer chatter¬ 
ing. A squirrel sat on a limb, looking down at them. 
Each time he exploded in a bark his long tail jerked. 
He ran farther out along the limb until he reached 
the very end of it, and then jumped across from the 
last twig to the tip of a limb that projected from the 
next tree. Along that he raced to the trunk, then 
up and out on another limb, where he stopped and 
began chattering and barking again. Soon another 
squirrel that had kept silent and hidden, lying on top 
of a big limb where you could not see him from be¬ 
low, began to bark in the same way. 

“They’ve got our nuts,” said Jim. “All except 
the ones in the basket. They don’t want us to have 
those others.” 

That seemed to be the way of it, for Jim and 
Peggy knew that there had been lots of nuts on 
the trees. But they concluded that the squirrels 
needed the nuts anyhow, for winter food supplies. 


54 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Besides, Jim and Peggy had lived there for only 
two or three months, but the squirrels probably 
had been there for years. So it was a question as 
to who could best lay claim to the nuts. 

“Next year/’ declared Peggy, "maybe we’ll 



From the Nut Trees 


divide with them, but we're going to have a basket 
full for ourselves.” 

When they got back to the house they told Uncle 
John about it. 

“All right,” he said. “I’m laying up food sup¬ 
plies, too, and you can help me with that.” 

He was gathering into a pile the old plant stalks 
and dead weeds from the garden. There were 


FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 


55 

pieces of old sod, dug up when a drain had been 
laid, and all sorts of dead leaves and grass. 

“This won’t be any good for a while,” said Uncle 
John, “but after it rots down and we mix earth with 
it we’ll have plant food for our hotbeds and flats. 
Out here it will freeze and thaw, and that will 
help.” 

He said that stable manure was about the best 
material to make the soil rich for garden uses, but 
the manure should be well rotted. They’d add some 
of that, too. The reason for saving the old weeds 
and plant stalks was to put them to good use. 

“Why does manure have to be rotted?” asked 
Jim. 

“I can’t tell you just exactly why,” said Uncle 
John. “That is, I don’t know what you would call 
the chemistry of it. You’ll have to study that some 
time. It must be interesting. But I know that 
fresh stable manure isn’t as good for a garden as 
manure that’s older.” 

He went on then to explain that many vegetables 
need a rich soil to make them grow rapidly: the kind 
of a soil that is usually spoken of as loam. 

“We’ll need some loam early in the spring,” he 
said, “long before this pile is of any account. We’ll 
have to have some for our flats that we start seeds 
in, and for a hotbed. Probably the ground will still 
be frozen then, so we’d better lay in a stock where it 
won’t freeze.” 


56 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

They discussed various places and finally decided 
on the barn cellar. 

“It will freeze some down there,” said Uncle 
John, “but we’ll fix that.” 

So they picked out a corner of the cellar and 
brought in several wheelbarrow loads of rich earth 
that they shoveled up in the garden. Uncle John 
selected a place there next to the fence. He took 
a rule from his pocket and marked off a rectangle 
about six feet wide by ten feet long. They filled the 
barrow several times with the top soil from this 
space. 

“Now let’s get some more vines and weeds,” sug¬ 
gested Uncle John. 

These they piled in a thick layer on top of the 
heap of earth in the cellar to protect it from frost. 

“We’re not so different from the squirrels, after 
all,” laughed Uncle John. “They get ready for 
winter and so do we.” 

“We aren’t going to eat that dirt, though!” ob¬ 
jected Peggy. 

“No. But when this place is in running order 
we’ll have a good root cellar and we’ll store things 
that we will eat. Potatoes and cabbages and carrots. 
And in the house we’ll have beans and squashes and 
various other supplies. And lots of canned things 
that we’ll put up ourselves. That’s one reason for 
living on a farm. You can have things the way you 
want them.” 



Uncle John’s Compost Pile 







FOUR-FOOTED VISITORS 


59 


“How about apples ?” 

“We nearly forgot those, didn’t we? Well, I hope 
we’ll have enough of them to need a whole storage 
house just for them alone. 

“But that’s not this year,” he added. “I wish 
it were.” 

He stooped and took up the handles of the wheel¬ 
barrow. 

“Now I’ve got another job to start,” he said, “so 
that we can use that loam that’s in the cellar.” 

With Jim and Peggy following he went to the 
place in the garden where they had got the loam, 
and began to dig more soil out of the rectangular 
space, throwing it out to each side. 

“It’s easier to do it now,” he remarked, “than it 
will be next spring when the ground’s frozen.” 

“What’s it for?” asked Jim. 

“Guess.” 

“A root cellar?” 

“No. We wouldn’t need that next spring, would 
we?” 

“I’ll bet I know!” said Peggy. “It’s going to be 
a hotbed.” 

“Right you are,” said Uncle John. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 

Peggy stood looking out of the dining-room 
window. It was a cool day—the kind that made you 
think of the winter that would soon be making its 
appearance. Sunday dinner was just finished. 

“There's that old crow again,” Peggy remarked. 
“I think it must be the same one that comes every 
day and walks around in the garden.” 

“How can you tell it’s the same one?” demanded 
Jim “They all look alike ” 

“Well, he acts like the same one, anyway. 

“Daddy,” she continued, “what is he after in 
the garden ?” 

“Probably most anything that’s good to eat,” said 
Uncle John. 

“But what do crows eat?” 

“Folks will tell you they eat corn. They do, too. 
Often they’ll dig up the seed corn before it shows 
above the ground. Sometimes, when the corn is 
coming up, they’ll go along the rows and pull up the 
young plants.” 

“Is that why they put up scarecrows?” 

“Yes, it’s to drive them away from fields just 

60 



THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 61 

* 

planted to corn. Sometimes they shoot a crow and 
hang him up from a stake, to scare other crows 
away. Often they hang up old pieces of cloth, or 
old tin pans. But Tve heard of a better scheme than 
that.” 


“Tell us about it.” 

“An old farmer friend told me that he took a 
measure of corn and scattered it here and there in 
the field, on top of the ground. The crows would 
notice it right away* he said, and they’d begin to 


Looking for a Bird’s Nest in a Hollow 


62 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

hunt for it. They wouldn’t pull up the sprouted 
corn or dig for the seed corn but would look for the 
grain on top. By that scheme, he said, he didn’t 
lose any of his planted corn and he had the benefit 
of the crows’ eating up bugs that they’d find as they 
hunted around.” 

“Do they eat many bugs?” 

“Well, it’s funny. If you talk to a farmer he’ll 
probably tell you that a crow does nothing but harm. 
He’ll say he’s a thief and a rascal, and ought to be 
killed. But some of the men that work for the gov¬ 
ernment in the department of agriculture study what 
birds eat. They say that taking the average of the 
whole year the crow is all right. He does some 
damage, but he eats so many insects and other things 
that are harmful that he ought to be considered a 
friend, after all.” 

“Let’s see if we can tell what that one in the 
garden is eating,” suggested Peggy. 

They watched him through the window for a few 
minutes. He was walking about, sometimes among 
weeds, or grass, sometimes near the place where 
Uncle John had shoveled out earth for the hotbed. 
Often he stopped and appeared to pick up something 
from the ground. But they couldn’t tell what it ' 
was. 

When they opened the door quietly he saw them 
instantly and flew away. They walked out to the 
garden and looked about in the places where he had 


THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 63 

been, but they could find nothing that would give 
a clue as to what he had been eating. 

“How can they tell what a bird eats?” asked Jim. 

“They can find out a good deal about some birds 
by watching them feed, I think,” said Uncle John. 
“But they get their best information by killing some 
of them and examining their stomachs.” 

“Really kill them?” asked Peggy. 

“Yes. A few of them. It does seem a pity, 
but it's all right when you think it over. If a cer¬ 
tain kind of a bird is a good helper, and you can 
prove it, you’ll be able to persuade people to protect 
it, and after a time it will become plentiful. It gives 
the bird a clear record. Just like the crow, here. 
If the bird is under suspicion and the examinations 
prove that it really destroys fruit or grain or chases 
away other birds, then we know that it probably 
ought to be killed.” 

“Hawks are bad, aren’t they?” 

“Not all-of them. Some of them live on mice and 
small animals like that, and they are really bene¬ 
ficial. They ought to be protected instead of being 
shot. The same thing is true about some of the 
owls.” 

“I read once that birds help in orchards,” said 
Peggy. 

“Maybe I can show you something,” continued 
Uncle John. 

They walked out into the field where the big old 


64 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

apple trees stood, and Uncle John began to look 
closely at the trunk and limbs of one of the 
trees. Presently he pointed out a piece of loose bark. 
There was a small, ragged hole through it, about 
half as big as a lead pencil. He pulled off the piece 
of bark and turned it over. On the under side there 
had been a cocoon. You could see the margin of silk 
where it had been. The hole was opposite the center 
of it, and the occupant of the cocoon, whatever it 
had been, was gone. 

“That was an apple worm in there,” said Uncle 
John. “They call it the codling moth worm. It’s 
the one that eats a hole around the core of the apple. 
Then it goes to some hiding place like this and makes 
a cocoon. A bird came along and pecked a hole 
through the bark and got it.” 

“How did the bird know it was there?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe it could hear it move.” 

“What kind of a bird was it?” 

“We’ll have to look that up. I read about it in 
that bulletin about birds. I really never saw one 
before. When we get back to the house we’ll hunt 
it up in the bulletin.” 

Uncle John told about a place at Meriden, New 
Hampshire, that he had visited where birds were 
fed and protected. A bird sanctuary they called 
it. No one with a gun was allowed anywhere near. 
No cats were permitted to come on the place. Any 
harmful birds or small animals were destroyed. 


THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 


65 

“They had various ways of feeding the birds/’ 
said Uncle John. “They’d planted bushes that have 
seeds or berries that birds like. Some kinds of birds 
were attracted by them. Then they’d built regular 
feeding places where they put out food, especially 
in winter.” 



A Dining Room for Birds 


“What were they like?” asked Jim. 

“One kind was a sort of big box open on one 
side. It was on a pivot so that it could swing around 
easily, and it had a piece of tin or a board on top. 
When the wind blew it made the box swing until the 
opening was away from the wind. In that way the 
wind never blew straight into the opening, and 













66 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

neither did the rain or snow. They put seeds and 
grain in the box.” 

"‘Weren’t the birds afraid of the box when it 
would swing around?” 

“No, I think not. They seemed to be used to it. 



• A Robin’s Nest 


Then they had suet and bones for them,” he con¬ 
tinued. “They fastened the bones up to limbs and 
they put the suet behind some screen wire tacked to 
limbs.” 

“Why can’t we take some of that screen wire 
that we had left over and fix it for suet?” asked 
Jim. 




THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 


6; 

“Guess you can. You might try one of those 
swinging boxes, too. As I remember it they had 
a pane of glass set in each side, but I don’t know 
whether that was so that the birds could see out or 
so that the folks could see in. You might try a 
bird house, too.” 

“What were they like?” 

“Oh, there were different kinds. One was like a 
short section of a limb with a hole bored in one side 
and down the center. But it takes a special machine 
to make those. My father made two or three one 
time out of a limb that he found that was hollow 
in the center. He sawed it up into lengths about 
eight or ten inches long and nailed a board across 
the top and bottom of each one. Then he cut a 
hole through the side, for the bird to go in and out 
through. When he nailed them up in a tree, blue¬ 
birds took them over and raised families in them.” 

“I think I know where there’s a hollow limb,” 
said Jim. 

“Well, they had others made out of small boxes. 
It depends on the kind of bird that you’re fixing a 
home for. Some like one kind of a place and some 
another.” 

“Most of them make their own nests, in branches 
and places like that, don’t they?” suggested Peggy. 

“Yes, most of them do. You know some nest 
in the grass. You’d think they’d surely be found 
and killed by some enemy. But they hide their nests 


68 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

pretty well. Then there are a good many that build 
in bushes and thickets. And you’ve seen robin’s 
nests, haven’t you?” 

Jim and Peggy nodded. 



The Hanging Nest of the Oriole 


“You know, all the robin wants is just a place 
that’s solid enough to hold the nest. She doesn’t 
seem to try very hard to hide it. Yet often there 
will be one close by a house and you’ll never notice 





THE FRIENDLY BIRDS 69 

it until after the birds have gone. Have you seen an 
oriole’s nest?” 

“I think there’s one in the elm tree in front of the 
house,” said Peggy. 

“Let’s go look at it,” suggested Uncle John. 

They walked around to the front of the house 
and could easily see the nest swinging from the 
twigs at the end of a long branch. 

“We can see it better from the upstairs window,” 
proposed Peggy. 

So they went up. The nest was only a few yards 
away from the window. They could see that it 
was like a tiny, woven basket, lightly fastened to 
several twigs so that it hung as if by a handle. 

“Cats couldn’t get that,” remarked Jim. 

“No, and it’s cats that kill a good many birds,” 
replied Uncle John. “Folks like to have them be¬ 
cause they’re friendly companions around a house 
and they kill mice. But they kill birds, too. Of 
course the cat shouldn’t be blamed, for that’s its in¬ 
stinct. It naturally likes to hunt. Only, the birds 
do suffer. And we need the birds, especially around 
an orchard and garden.” 

“Let’s find out about that one that made the hole 
in the bark and got the apple worm,” said Peggy. 

Uncle John found the bulletin and looked it up. 
It was the downy woodpecker. 

“I’ve never seen one,” said Peggy. 

Uncle John was standing by the window. 


70 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Look!” he said. “Look there! On the trunk of 
that apple tree! No, he’s gone behind the trunk, 
but he’ll be back.” 

In a moment a gray-and-black bird with a red spot 
on the back of his neck came sidling around *he 
trunk, zigzagging upward, pecking at the bark as he 
did so. 

“It’s a downy,” said Uncle John. 


CHAPTER VII 


ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 

Two or three times Old Eben, the mail carrier, 
had brought interesting-looking packages and big 
envelopes. Uncle John was working for Uncle 
David North now. When he came home from work 
and had finished the chores he would get out the con¬ 
tents of these envelopes and parcels and look them 
over, first one and then another. 

Finally, one evening, as they were finishing 
supper, he said, “Let’s all have a look at those cata¬ 
logs and make out a list. What do you say?” 

Aunt Emily and Peggy finished the dishes and 
Uncle John spread out the catalogs and pamphlets 
on the sitting-room table. When they all sat down 
together he took a sheet of paper and wrote some¬ 
thing at the top of it. This he folded over tightly 
so that it couldn’t be read. 

“That’s a secret,” he laughed. “It’s a guidepost.” 

“I think I can guess,” remarked Aunt Emily. 

“Never you mind,” admonished Uncle John. “I’ll 
tell what it is later.” 

The catalog that was on top had come from a big 

dealer in the city who sold all sorts of farm imple- 

71 


72 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

ments and tools. Uncle John opened this and began 
to turn the pages slowly. First there were plows. 

“We won’t need any of those,” said Uncle John. 
“Uncle David has an extra one that he bought at an 



Catalogs 


auction sale and he’ll sell it to us at the same price 
that he gave for it. He paid only six dollars.” 

He wrote an item on the sheet of paper that he 
had made ready. “Plow, $6.00,” it read. 






ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 


73 

“Is it the kind of a plow that you ride?” asked 

Jim. 

“No. It’s just a walking plow. We’ll get one of 
the other kind some other year, if we have good 
luck.” 

There were harrows next in the catalog: spike- 
tooth, spring-tooth, smoothing, disk, cutaway. 
Uncle John said at once that they’d need to buy a 
disk harrow. There was none to be borrowed for 
the length of time that they would be using it. 
They’d have need for it, now and then, through most 
of the season. 

“If we’re going to bring young apple trees along 
we’ll have to own a disk harrow,” he declared. 
“There’s the garden to be fitted, too. And probably 
two or three acres of potatoes and some beans.” 

So he made a second entry on the sheet. 

They looked at pictures of mowing machines. 
Uncle John hesitated. “Any farm ought to have 
one, of course,” he said. “There is a good deal of 
hay to be cut on this place. Probably I could borrow 
one from Uncle David for this season, but I don’t 
want to do that if it can be helped. It might get 
damaged.” 

After talking it over he added the machine to the 
list on the sheet, but he put a question mark after it. 

There were rakes and cultivators and grain drills. 

“We won’t need to buy a drill this season,” said 
Uncle John. “But we must get a rake and a culti- 


74 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

vator. Perhaps we can find some more secondhand 
tools for sale somewhere. But we can’t count on 
that. We’ll have to put them down at the prices in 
the catalog.” 

“Here’s a plank drag,” said Jim. 



A Wheel Hoe 


“There’s no need to buy that,” declared his father. 
“We can easily make one. All that we’ll have to 
enter on our list will be enough to buy some planks 
and the iron fittings.” 

The wagons in the catalog looked spick and span. 
There was a picture of one printed in colors. But 
they already had a wagon that would do for a year 
or two, one that Uncle John had bought from a 


ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 75 

neighbor. Although it had long since lost its paint 
there was nothing serious the matter with it. 

Another section of the catalog was given over to 
small tools. Here they could get along with few 
purchases. Some things, such as hammer and saw, 
they had brought with them from the city. Others, 
such as a grindstone, were on hand in the tool shed 
when they came to Apple-top Farm. 

Peggy found illustrations of wheel hoes. 

“With the good-sized garden that we’ll have, a 
wheel hoe would be mighty handy,” suggested 
Uncle John. 

“How does it work?” inquired Aunt Emily. 

“You push it along ahead of you. There are 
various attachments for it, you see: little cultivator 
teeth that you can bolt in place, and hoe blades, and 
other things. Some of them have two wheels and 
some have one. It’s the wheel that takes the 
weight.” 

Uncle John thought it over. 

“We’ll add it to the list for the present,” he said. 

In another catalog there were pictures of spray 
pumps. Two or three of them were fitted with gaso¬ 
line engines to do the work of pumping. Others 
had pumps that you operated by hand. Besides 
these there were outfits made small enough for a 
man to carry. Uncle John said that in time Apple- 
top Farm would require a power sprayer. There 
were already many trees on the place. Proper care 


76 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

of them demanded good spraying applied at the 
right time so as to protect the trees from damage by 
insects and disease. Of course, you could spray an 
apple tree with an ordinary barrel outfit, but it took 
time and you couldn't do a large orchard rapidly 
enough to finish it in good season. 

“However,” he concluded, “there’s the outfit in 
the barn and it will do for this year. We haven’t 
so many trees but that we can manage them with a 
barrel pump. At least for the present. Some of 
them are small and don’t require much time.” 

“How about the potatoes?” asked Aunt Emily. 

“They’ll need spraying, too. Several times, prob¬ 
ably. But that can be done with the same barrel 
outfit. It’s really a well-made rig and it’s in work • 
ing order. Jim and I have tried it.” 

Aunt Emily turned to a booklet that she had been 
looking over. It was a catalog of poultry equip¬ 
ment: incubators, brooders, and various smaller 
items such as food hoppers. They talked them over. 
Aunt Emily suggested that perhaps it would be best 
not to attempt to hatch their own chicks the first 
season. If they omitted that they could do without 
incubators. But they would have to get a brooder. 
So Uncle John entered that on the list. 

The booklet that was the most attractive of all, 
so far as the design on the cover was concerned, was 
a catalog of seeds. In the front part of it were il¬ 
lustrations of vegetables: muskmelons with a sec- 


ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 


77 


tion cut out to show the juicy flesh inside; radishes 
with round, scarlet bodies, slender white tips, and 
dark-green leaves; string beans growing thickly on 
a stocky, bushy plant; and ears of corn with the 
husk stripped back so that you could see the tender, 
white grains. 

They made out a list of the seeds that they would 
order. It was dififerent to choose among some of 
the inviting varieties. The descriptions of each 
sounded so attractive that it seemed a pity to omit 
any. One of the varieties of peas, for example, was 
described as ‘Very sweet and tender; should be 
grown in every garden,” while the next one on 
the same page was declared to be “unusually ten¬ 
der and of fine flavor; no garden should be with¬ 
out it.” 

There was the difficult question, also, of the 
amount of each kind of seed to order. Uncle John 
solved that. He drew a rough diagram of the 
garden and marked ofif the rows on the paper. In 
a bulletin he found a table that told how many 
feet of row a pint or an ounce of each kind of seed 
would plant. With that to serve as guide, and by 
estimating as carefully as they could how much of 
each vegetable they might need, they managed to 
make out the list of seeds. 

The back part of the same catalog showed many 
pictures of flowers, some of them printed in bright 
colors. 


78 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“What shall we allow for flower seeds, mother ?” 
Uncle John asked of Aunt Emily. 

She shook her head and suggested that they’d 
better not count on buying seeds of that kind the 
first year. But Uncle John made an entry on the 
list, nevertheless. 

Then he took from his pocket a letter and a 
printed sheet that he had received from the county 
agricultural agent. 

“It’s a long way from flowers to fertilizers and 
spray materials,” he said, “but we must make allow¬ 
ance for those things, too. We’ll need some com¬ 
mercial fertilizer for the orchard and the potatoes. 
Probably a little will be required for the garden, 
too. And we’ll have to spray.” 

He had already estimated the quantities that 
would likely be required, and had set down the 
costs as he had figured them from the printed list 
sent out by the county agent. 

“We’ll mix our own fertilizers,” he said. “That 
will save us some money. But it will take a consid¬ 
erable allowance to see us through.” 

So he made another entry on the sheet where he 
had set down the costs of the implements and the 
rest. 

Field seeds came next. Here again Uncle John 
had prepared a list beforehand, after consultation 
with Uncle David. Then they made an entry to 
provide for the baby chicks that they would buy in 



wmzm 


A Power Sprayer 















ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 


81 


the spring. And finally there was feed grain to con¬ 
sider, for the horse and the cow and the baby chicks. 
Uncle John’s sheet was about full by that time. 

He added up all the items, then. It made a sum 
that looked enormous to Jim and Peggy. For that 



A Smoothing Harrow for Gardens 


matter Uncle John and Aunt Emily shook their 
heads over it. 

“Now we’ll look at the guidepost,” suggested 
Uncle John. 

He turned back the fold at the top of the sheet, 
where he had written something before they began. 
There was a sum of money entered there. It was 
less than the total at the bottom of the sheet. 





82 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“That figure there,” he said, “is the amount that 
we can count on for our supplies and equipment until 
next summer. It isn’t enough, but it will have to 
do.” 

He went on to explain, then. His work with 
Uncle David would continue through the winter 
until the jobs at Apple-top required all his time in 
the spring. He was making only ordinary wages. 
In fact he was taking the place of Andrew Wiggin, 
who ordinarily worked for Uncle David. The 
wages would provide living expenses for the family, 
since they had their own cow and chickens and their 
house to live in. He hoped to save some money out 
of what he earned, but it was best not to count 
on that. Sickness might come, or something else 
that could not be foreseen. If they succeeded in 
saving there would be that much more to depend 
on. 

For their equipment of machinery and supplies 
they would need additional money. A check had ar¬ 
rived that day for the apple crop. There were 
seventy barrels—not quite as much as the buyer 
had estimated—and the amount received for them 
was a hundred and forty dollars. Uncle John had 
decided to add to this four hundred dollars from his 
savings account. He said that he didn’t like to use 
savings for current expenses, but it appeared to be 
necessary to do so this year. In a way, of course, 
it would be investment in farm equipment; or you 


ADVENTURES IN CATALOGS 83 

might look at it as a loan to the farm. At any rate, 
some arrangement of the kind was necessary. 

The apple check and the savings amount added to¬ 
gether made five hundred and forty dollars. It was 
this sum that he had written at the top of the sheet. 
Now the task was to make the total at the bottom 
of the sheet no larger than the amount at the top. 

They considered each item and talked it over. 
The wheelbarrow they could do without. Ordinary 
hoes and rakes would suffice for the first year. The 
new mowing machine had to be omitted. Uncle 
John decided that he would try to borrow or rent 
one. The allowance for a cultivator and that for 
a horse rake could be reduced if secondhand ones 
could be found. Uncle John reduced the sum. 
“We’ll hunt around until we find a bargain some¬ 
where,” he said. 

The total was still too large. They discussed 
it for a long time and finally decided to reduce the 
number of baby chicks that they would buy. 

“Probably,” said Aunt Emily, “it will be wiser 
for us not to try to raise too many the first year. 
Every hundred that we get means twenty-five 
dollars on that list, besides the food supplies for 
them. Let’s get five hundred instead of eight 
hundred.” 

That made the total almost small enough. 

Aunt Emily pointed to the last item on the list; 
the allowance for flower seeds. 


84 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“We'd better omit that," she suggested. 

Uncle John shook his head. “We’ll keep that 
just as it is!’’ he said. “Our list is all right, now." 

“Then I’m going to raise some flowers to sell," 
declared Aunt Emily. 

The next day Uncle John sent off the first order. 
Some of the items on the list would not be needed 
for a long time and these would not be ordered until 
later. But some of the supplies ought to be on 
hand within a few weeks. As Uncle John said, it 
wouldn’t hurt anything to have them on their way. 


CHAPTER VIII 


GOOD ENDS FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS 

It was a snowy winter evening in January. The 
weeks had slipped by, busy with school work, then 
the holiday vacation and then more school work. 
Uncle John continued to go to Uncle David’s almost 
every day, to take care of the duties that he had 
undertaken there until spring. Now, with a wood 
fire going in the big, old fireplace, and with supper 
just finished, they were all sitting in the living 
room. 

The seed catalog, with its brightly colored cover, 
was lying beneath some newspapers on the table. 
Peggy spied the corner of it and pulled it out. She 
held it up and looked at the gorgeous picture of 
radishes and muskmelons. Then she fished out from 
the pile another booklet, also provided with a gay 
cover, but picturing on one side a spray of hand¬ 
some red raspberries and on the other a twig with 
a beautiful crimson apple hanging from it, in the 
midst of rich green leaves. 

“Daddy,” she said, “where do all the different 
kinds of vegetables and fruits come from?” 

Uncle John took the two booklets, held them out 

85 


86 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

at arm’s length and turned them over, half closing 
his eyes. 



There Are Many Different Species of Wild Plants 


“I’m not so sure about all of those in the dealer’s 
catalogs,” he said. “Some of them just come from 
imagination, I suspect.” 




GOOD ENDS 


87 


“But how about the rest?” persisted Peggy. 

“I can’t tell you all about those,” said Uncle John. 
“But I think I can tell you a little. Some of it, per¬ 
haps, we can look up in bulletins or books.” 

He pulled his chair back from the fire and 
stretched out his legs. 

“Of course,” he began, “there are just naturally 
a great many different kinds of plants in the world: 
wild plants, I mean.” 

“Violets and buttercups and things like that?” 

“Yes, and wild gooseberries and wild currants, 
and many other kinds of wild fruits. And lots of 
dififerent plants that we could eat the leaves of or 
the stems or roots, if they were plentiful enough or 
if of good enough flavor. There are thousands of 
species. They’ve all been here for a very long time; 
some of them, no doubt, longer than others, but all 
of them for thousands of years, probably. You see, 
there are so many dififerent kinds of places in the 
world—swamps and deserts, cold climates and 
tropics, mountain slopes and valleys, and all the 
various kinds of soil—that there would have to be 
a great many varieties of plants to fit into all of 
these places.” 

Uncle John pointed to the half-burned log at the 
back of the fire. 

“That hickory log,” he continued, “came from an 
old tree that grew up and died on Apple-top Farm. 
It’s a tree native to these regions. That is, it grows 


88 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

wild here and all through a large part of the United 
States. But there are other countries where it 
doesn’t grow at all. Either it never happened to 
get a start there, or it couldn’t thrive or live because 
there were conditions that were unfavorable to it.” 

“Maybe there weren’t any squirrels there to plant 
the nuts,” suggested Jim. 

“Well, that may be. But it’s the nuts that I was 
going to speak of. You both know that hickory nuts 
are good to eat—good for human beings as well as 
squirrels. They’ve been gathered by people and 
stored up for food ever since we have any records. 
No doubt the Indians used to get them. But they 
are just the same nuts that have always grown wild; 
they are what we speak of as a native or unimproved 
variety.” 

“Could we change them?” 

“Yes, no doubt we could. But it would take many 
years of patient effort, and no one is likely to set 
about it.” 

“How would they do it?” 

“I think I can best explain that by telling you a 
true story.” 

Uncle John picked up one of the catalogs and 
opened it to a page that showed pictures of tomatoes. 
He pointed out one of these. 

“It’s the story of that tomato,” he continued. 
“I’ll try to tell you about it. 

“Not far from the house where we lived when we 



GOOD ENDS 



89 

first moved to town there was a big, open space, like 
a dozen or more city lots all in one. All of that space 
was planted to tomatoes. Every year it was the 
same—nothing but tomatoes in the whole piece. It 
had been that way for several years before we 
moved into the neighborhood, and it continued until 


Pedigreed Tomatoes 

the ground was divided up into lots and sold to 
people who wanted to build houses; and then the 
tomato farm was moved to another location, out of 
town. 

“The man who raised them was a plant breeder. 
When he was a young man he started out to develop 
an improved variety of tomato, something that 


90 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

would be better than any other kind that had ever 
been raised. He kept steadily at it almost all his 
life, and the way he went about it was like this: 

“When he raised his first field of tomatoes he 
watched every plant, right through the season, and 
marked those that seemed to be best. He wanted 
plants that bore their fruit early, and that had fruit 
that was smooth and of good size. He saved the 
seed from those plants and used that seed to raise 
his crop of plants the next year. Each season for 
a good while he kept on doing that. 

“Then next he chose certain plants that were 
doing best and cross-pollinated those-” 

“What is cross-pollinating ?” asked Jim. 

“Well, you know the blossom of a plant bears 
what looks like a brownish or yellowish dust that is 
called pollen. When this pollen is dusted on another 
blossom it helps to form the seed and fruit. The 
bees and other insects and the wind usually carry 
the pollen. But you can put paper bags over the 
blossoms before they open so as to keep bees away, 
and later when the blossom is ready you can bring 
pollen to it from some other plant that you have 
selected and dust it on with a little brush. Then the 
seed will be somewhat like the plant from which the 
pollen came and somewhat like the plant on which it 
grows. 

“So the man kept working at his tomatoes, al¬ 
ways selecting those that were best and uniting some 



GOOD ENDS 


9 1 

of them by cross-pollinating, and then saving the 
seed to plant the following year. 

“In time he had developed a variety of tomato 
that was better than almost any others that had ever 
been grown. It was given his name—that name that 
you see there in the catalog; and you see it is still 
sold under that same name. Probably many thou¬ 
sands of people have benefited by his work. They’ve 
been able to have better tomatoes in their gardens 
than they could have had otherwise.” 

Peggy picked up the catalog again and turned its 
pages. 

“Did all these vegetables and flowers come from 
work like that?” she asked. 

“Many of them did. But not all. A large number 
just came about by chance. Here is the way that 
happens: 

“When a seedsman or a gardener is raising lots 
of plants he sometimes finds that there is one that is 
different from the rest and is better. Perhaps it 
is a new shade in a flower, or an extra early bean 
plant. If he saves the seed and plants it, the next 
year, off by itself where other plants can’t mix 
with it, it may happen that the flowers or the beans 
will be like the ones that he first noticed. They 
don’t always turn out that way. Often they don’t 
at all. But if they do he may have a new variety to 
place on the market. That is the way that many of 
them are started.” 


92 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Peggy was looking at the picture of the crimson 
apple on the booklet cover. 

“With apples,” said Uncle John, “and many other 
fruits, our good varieties, as I understand it, are 
mainly the result of chance. I saw a book at Uncle 


There Are Many Varieties of Apples 

David’s that listed nearly seven hundred varieties 
of apples-” 

“That’s a lot more than the tree man said,” in¬ 
terrupted Peggy. “He thought that there might 
be a hundred.” 

“Well, of course most of them are not on the 
market, and he wouldn’t be expected to know about 
them. They were never good enough to be planted 
by very many people. Or perhaps it would be fairer 





I 



The Melon in the Center Was Bred from the Ones at Left and Right 


















GOOD ENDS 


95 

to say that they were not especially better than some 
other varieties that people already were familiar 
with, and so no one felt like changing and planting 
them. 

“But what I was going to say was that only a 
very few varieties of apples came about by real 
planning on the part of a plant breeder. In the 
list in the book at Uncle David’s there were less 
than fifty where they knew how the variety started. 
You see it just happened that some one noticed a 
seedling tree that was bearing unusually good fruit, 
and then buds or grafts were taken from that tree 
to start others. A few men have really set to it 
and raised seedling apple trees, just like the man that 
I told you about raised tomatoes, and they have 
given us some splendid varieties.” 

“Is it harder to raise the apple seedlings?” asked 
Peggy. 

“It isn’t especially hard. But it takes a good deal 
of land for a thousand apple trees, as compared with 
tomato plants, even if the apples are planted closer 
together than they would be in an orchard. Most 
of all is the time it takes. Tomatoes and other vege¬ 
tables you can check up on at the end of a few weeks. 
But with an apple seedling it requires six or eight 
years before the tree bears its first fruit, and you 
can’t tell anything about it all that time. Maybe you 
are putting time and money into the care of a 
thousand trees and not one will be worth saving.” 


96 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Did the book at Uncle David’s tell about plums 
and cherries and other fruits?” 

“No, but I’ve been told that the history of most 
of the others was somewhat similar to that of the 
apple. They say that good work in plant breeding 
was done with grapes, so as to gain some of the good 
points of European varieties along with our own 
native grapes that grow wild in this country. The 
plums, too, were improved a good deal by breeding 
with varieties that grow wild in this country and 
with others that come from Europe. There has been 
lots of improvement made in peaches. When you 
come to the strawberry, we have dozens of varieties 
that plant breeders developed by crossing and unit¬ 
ing the good points of one sort with those of 
another. But strawberries, you see, are more like 
the vegetables to work with because they mature in 
a season.” 

Uncle John thumbed over the pages of the book¬ 
let on fruits. 

“It’s funny—isn’t it”—he said, “that when you 
buy a young fruit tree, such as a Baldwin, for exam¬ 
ple, you are really getting a piece of the original 
tree.” 

“Why, how could that be?” Peggy demanded. 

“It’s true, in a way. Fruit trees such as apple 
don’t come to seed. By that I mean that if you plant 
the seed you won’t necessarily get a tree that is just 
the same as the one that bore the seed. So the way 



GOOD ENDS 


97 


it’s done is to take small pieces from the original 
tree, which are called buds or cions, and graft them 
on seedlings. Of course when that tree grows large, 
cions can be taken from it—and so on. But in 
a way, you see, all of these are part of the original 
tree.” 

“Can you tell us about grafting?” 

“I think that I can show you better than I can 
tell you. Well have a little to do as soon as the sap 
begins to run this spring.” 

“How does it happen that we can plant vegetable 
seeds and have them come out the way we want?” 

Uncle John studied the fire. 

“I don’t know that I can answer that fully,” he 
said. “I think it’s just because with vegetables and 
flowers they have been propagated by seed for so 
long that they naturally come true. Maybe that isn’t 
a very good explanation, but it’s the only one that 
I know.” 


CHAPTER IX 


GLASS HOUSES 

While the wintry storms of January were still 
blowing clouds of snowflakes through the air the 
mailman brought the seeds that had been ordered: 
two packages and a cloth bag full. It seemed out of 
place to think of seeds and garden-making when 
everything was still frozen up, and of course it 
would be many weeks before the garden would ac¬ 
tually be planted. But there were some kinds of 
plants that were to be started indoors and in a hot¬ 
bed, in order that they might be several inches tall 
by the time outdoor planting could begin. 

“First of all,” said Uncle John, “we must test the 
seeds and see if they are all right.” 

“I know about that,” said Peggy. “We did some 
at school one time. We wrapped them in a cloth 
and kept it moist.” 

“This time I think we’ll do it a little differently,” 
suggested her father. 

Jim was looking at the cloth bag. 

“This one’s got a tag on it that says, Test, 91 
per cent,’ ” he called. “What does that mean, 
dad?” 


98 


GLASS HOUSES 


99 

“All of the seeds have been sampled,” explained 
Uncle John. “The dealer sends a sample to the state 
officials, or else they have men going around collect¬ 
ing samples. These are all examined to see if there 
are any weed seeds or other things in them that 



The Seeds Had Arrived 


shouldn't be there. A certain number, too, are put 
where it is moist and warm to find out if they will 
sprout all right. Then a certificate is sent to the 
dealer showing what the results of the tests were. 
He can make copies of the certificates and fasten 
them to the bags of seeds. That’s what you found 
there on that bag. But when the seeds are weighed 
out into packages the dealer doesn’t try to attach a 






ioo JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

copy, because there are too many of the small pack¬ 
ages to make that possible.” 

“But if our seeds have all been tested,” proposed 
Peggy, “why do we have to do it too?” 

“We don’t have to. But we want to. You know, 
even if the tests have been made there is a chance 
that somebody made a mistake somewhere. Maybe 
some of the seeds came from a state where the man 
that did the testing didn’t always do his work 
properly; or something might have happened since 
the test was made. It wouldn’t make so much differ¬ 
ence if we were going to raise the plants for fun 
only, but when we need to be sure that everything 
grows all right it’s best to do some testing ourselves. 
Probably all the seeds are good, but we’ll find out 
for sure.” 

The next afternoon, when Jim came back from 
school, he found Uncle John at work in the tool 
house. There was a supply of odd boards there. 
These Uncle John was sawing into sixteen-inch 
pieces. They found a few lengths of narrow strips, 
part of them two inches wide and part three inches. 
Uncle John told Jim to prepare from these a number 
of pieces fourteen inches long and an equal number 
eleven inches long. 

These narrow pieces Uncle John nailed together 
to form a set of frames measuring eleven by sixteen, 
just like the sides of boxes two or three inches 
deep, without any bottoms. The boards that Uncle 


< 

i) j 

t * 



GLASS HOUSES 


ior 


John had first sawed up he now nailed on these 
frames to make the bottoms. When they had 
finished they had a dozen shallow boxes. 

“These are what they call ‘flats/ ” said Uncle 
John. “We’ll use some of them now for our seed¬ 
testing, and later we’ll use all of these and more like 
them for starting our young plants.” 

They carried four of the boxes to the barn cellar, 
uncovered one side of the pile of loam that they 
had hauled there before winter began, and filled the 
flats with it. Then they took them to the house, into 
the kitchen. 

Uncle John marked off the earth in the flats in 
rows, two inches apart. He brought the seeds and 
Peggy opened one of the packages. She counted out 
on the table fifty seeds and planted them in the 
first row, while Uncle John took a little strip of clean 
wood and wrote on it the name of the vegetable as 
it was printed on the package. Each package they 
opened and sampled in the same way, except that 
when they came to corn and beans and a few others 
that had large seeds, they counted out only twenty 
instead of fifty. 

When the samples were all planted and watered 
they made a place for the flats on top of the big 
woodbox, not far from the kitchen stove. 

Uncle John next began to make ready the hot¬ 
bed. It would be possible to raise some plants in 
the kitchen windows, but there would not be space 


102 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

enough there for more than a small part of the flats 
that they hoped to prepare. It was a part of their 
plan to have extra flats to sell in Milford: tomato, 
cabbage, and lettuce. This meant plenty of room, 
with warmth to start the plants going and abundant 



One of the Flats 


opportunity for sunshine. A hotbed was the way 
to provide this, unless there was a greenhouse to be 
had, and Apple-top Farm had never possessed a 
greenhouse. 

In the loft of the tool house there were several 
storm windows that once had been in use on the 
house but had been discarded. 

“We’ll fix those up,” announced Uncle John. 




GLASS HOUSES 


103 


“They aren’t the same width as regular hotbed sash, 
but they’ll do for this year anyway. We’ll fix our 
frame so that they’ll fit.” 

He and Jim got them down. There were several 
broken panes of glass in them. Old Eben, the mail 
carrier, brought out some new panes from Milford 
the next day and they repaired the sash. 

In the barn cellar Uncle John prepared a pile of 
fresh horse manure, packing it down and throwing 
several pails of hot water on it. After a few days 
he forked it over and packed it down again. It was 
fermenting and was growing hot. 

Meanwhile, he selected some wide boards from a 
pile under the barn and carried them out to the 
garden to the pit that he had dug in the fall. There 
was some snow in the pit. He shoveled this out and 
lined the pit with the boards. At each corner he 
nailed a piece of two-by-four. The board walls he 
carried up, making them twelve inches high above 
ground along the rear of the pit and six inches high 
along the front. The end walls he sloped to an even 
slant from rear to front. The pit had been dug so 
that the lower part was toward the southeast. 
When it was all walled up it measured ten feet along 
the front and back and six feet along the ends. 

Uncle John nailed other pieces of two-by-four 
from the rear wall to the front, spacing them two 
and a half feet apart. This was the width of the 
storm windows. 


104 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

After the pit was ready and when the manure 
heap in the barn cellar was warm and steaming, 
Uncle John and Jim set to work with the wheelbar¬ 
row and filled the pit up to the level of the ground. 
Outside they piled more manure against the board 
walls all around. It took them all of the time that 
they could manage for it out of two afternoons. 
They put the sash in place, and the hotbed was 
nearly ready. 

Meanwhile they all watched the flats in the 
kitchen, where they had planted the seeds to test 
them. Most of the seeds were coming up nicely. 
But there were four rows that seemed not to be 
doing well at all. 

“There isn’t a single plant of parsnips or of 
carrots,” exclaimed Peggy. 

“That’s all right,” replied Uncle John. “Those 
seeds are naturally slow to germinate. 

“But these other two rows,” he continued, “are 
another story.” 

He opened his knife and with the blade carefully 
pushed back the earth along one of the rows and 
then along the other. A few of the seeds were 
sprouting. But many gave no signs of life. 

“They aren’t any good,” declared Uncle John. 
“Both lots of tomato seed are poor. There’s some¬ 
thing the matter with them.” 

“What will you do, John?” asked Aunt Emily. 

“We’ll have to send for more seed. And there 



Uncle John Prepared the Hotbeds 












GLASS HOUSES 


107 

isn’t time to wait for it, either. We’ll want those 
plants to sell in Milford. Probably there will be 
more demand for them than for anything else we’ll 
have. It’s too bad. But it wouldn’t do to plant that 
seed. I guess it’s a good thing we tested it, or we 
wouldn’t have had any plants at all.” 

“Perhaps Old Eben can get you some seed in 
Milford.” 

“It might be, but it isn’t likely.” 

Uncle John wrote a letter at once to a seed house 
in the nearest city, and gave it to Old Eben that 
noon. He asked him, also, if he would inquire for 
tomato seed at Milford. If they had seed of the 
varieties that he named, Eben was to bring a supply 
of it and not send the letter to the city. 

Old Eben reported the next day. He had not been 
able to find the right seed in Milford and had sent 
the letter to the city. The tomatoes would have 
to wait. 

There was no occasion to delay the rest of the 
planting, however, merely because the tomatoes 
would be late. The other seeds that were due for 
starting under glass tested out well enough. So 
the flats were filled with earth, rows were marked 
ofif, and the cabbage, lettuce, and celery were 
planted. To distribute the seeds evenly Uncle John 
used an old envelope. He sealed the flap down, cut 
ofif the end, placed the seeds inside, and by sifting 
them out of the end dropped them smoothly into 


io8 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

place. The loam in the boxes had been moderately 
packed down, firmly but not too hard. When a 
box was finished Aunt Emily spread a piece of 
burlap over the top and watered it. The cloth let 
the water through but prevented it from disturbing 
the seeds. 

Inside the hotbed an inch or two of earth had been 
spread over the manure. The fiats were placed on 
top of this. It was warm in there. The fermenting 
manure made plenty of heat. Each morning the 
sashes were raised an inch or two at the lower 
end and a block of wood was placed under each 
one, so that there might be ventilation and in order 
to keep it from growing too hot inside when the 
sun was shining on the glass. Each evening the 
sashes were tightly closed. 

Two or three nights when it grew very cold out¬ 
side Uncle John and Jim spread straw all over the 
top of the hotbed, holding it in place by boards. 

“Some day we’ll have straw mats for this,” said 
Uncle John. “We can make them ourselves, just 
big enough to fit over an ordinary hotbed section. 
In daytime you roll them up, out of the way.” 

Aunt Emily had started some of her flower seeds: 
asters, zinnias, petunias, and several others. The 
fiats containing these she placed in a kitchen 
window. 

A week after they had written for the tomato 
seed a letter came saying that the dealer was out of 


GLASS HOUSES 109 

one of the varieties that they had asked for, and in¬ 
quiring if he might send another instead. Uncle 
John sent a letter back at once telling him to hurry 
along the variety that he had. But that caused an- 



A Transplanted Flat 

other delay. When finally the se£d arrived nearly 
two weeks had passed and the other plants in the 
hotbed were well up. They started the tomatoes 
that same day. But it was certain now that they 
would be late. Worst of all, the hotbed would be 






no JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

gradually losing its heat and they would miss part 
of the warmth that the tomatoes otherwise would 
have had to help on their way. 

Uncle John spent an evening or two making more 
flats, until there were enough to fill all the space in 
the hotbed and the kitchen windows. Before long 
the plants that had been started first would be ready 
to transplant. 

In fact it seemed only a few days before the rows 
in the first flats looked crowded. They made ready 
the other flats, then, filling them with loam. Uncle 
John devised a board guide for transplanting, mak¬ 
ing it just the size of the top of a flat and boring 
rows of three-quarter inch holes across it. He 
whittled the end of a stick to a point that could be 
pushed down through the holes one after another. 
That made places in regular order to drop the little 
plants into. The ground was watered until it was 
moderately moist but not too wet. Then the flats 
went back into the hotbed, one after the other, each 
little plant with room enough now to grow. 

The tomato seeds had sprouted all right, but the 
plants were not large enough yet to move to other 
flats. 

“There’s no use in trying to hurry them,” said 
Uncle John. “They’ll have to take their time.” 

As spring came and it grew warmer outdoors the 
hotbed was opened wider during the daytime. The 
heat from the manure was rapidly dying out. 


GLASS HOUSES 


hi 


“That’s the way we want it to be,” Uncle John 
remarked. “The plants must be hardened off, so 
that they can stand it to be outdoors without any 
protection when it comes time to set them out in 
gardens. We ought to be able to leave the sash clear 
off pretty soon, except on cold nights.” 

But meanwhile other events were taking place at 
Apple-top Farm. 


CHAPTER X 


SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 

While it was still midwinter Aunt Emily com¬ 
pleted arrangements for the baby chicks that were 
to make up the farm’s big flock for the coming 
season. 

It did not take long to decide on the breed of 
chicks to be ordered. 

“We want the breed that will give us the best 
return all ’round!” Aunt Emily declared. “We 
want the pullets to lay lots of eggs, and they ought 
to begin in the fall when prices are going up. The 
young pullets weigh two pounds when they’re eight 
weeks old. Of course there are several good breeds, 
but I vote for Rhode Island Reds.” 

“They’ll get broody next winter,” prophesied 
Uncle John. 

“Yes, I know, but we’ll fix things so as to break 
that up. Barred Rocks would do the same thing.” 

So Rhode Island Reds it was. 

In February the brooder arrived. Uncle John 
brought it out from Milford and carried it into the 
kitchen so that they could unpack it and see how it 
worked. 


112 



SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 113 

“What’s this thing for ?” demanded Jim. He was 
looking at a big flat cone of galvanized iron, fully 
five feet across. It had come securely fastened in 
a wooden crate to protect it from danger. 


One of the Boxes that the Baby Chicks Came In 

“Wait until we’ve set up the stove and you’ll 
see,” replied Aunt Emily. 

The stove itself looked like an ordinary heating 
stove such as one may see in country stores and 
offices, except that it was small. It was about two 
feet high and was made of heavy black iron. In 
the top was an opening with a lid, where you could 
put in coal. There was a grate with an arrangement 
to shake it and beneath that an ash pit with a little 
door and a small pan to receive the ashes. 


114 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

A sort of iron arm with a curious contrivance 
attached to it came with the stove. Uncle John 
bolted this in place, so that it stuck out to one side 
of the stove about three or four inches from the 
floor. 

“That’s funny,” remarked Jim. “What’s it for?” 

“See this pair of brass disks?” answered Uncle 
John. “When it gets warm enough near the stove 
the disks spread apart because of the heat. That 
pulls on this rod here, and that opens the little door 
up there so as to check the draft and keep the stove 
from getting any hotter.” 

“Look,” interrupted Peggy. “You can turn this 
screw here up or down and that will make the draft 
open or close sooner, so you can regulate it for any 
heat that you want.” 

“That’s what we must do, too,” said Uncle John. 
“We’ll get the brooder house ready as soon as we 
can and set up the stove before the little chicks 
come, so as to have it working right.” 

“But what’s this big thing for?” demanded Jim, 
pointing to the cone of galvanized iron. 

“That’s the hover,” explained Aunt Emily. “It 
fits down over the stove and holds the heat.” 

Uncle John took off the crate from the cone and 
fitted it in place. The upper part of it had an open¬ 
ing that was just the same size as the top of the 
stove. The bottom rim was four or five inches from 
the floor when it was in position. 


SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 115 

“The chicks stay under here, don’t they?” said 
Peggy. 

“No,” said Aunt Emily, “they are not supposed 
to do that. Under there, they would be crowded too 
much and wouldn’t have enough ventilation. What 
you try to do is to keep the temperature under this 



Four Days Old 


hover high enough so that just outside the edge it 
will be exactly right for the chicks.” 

“Won’t they go under, where it’s too hot?” 

“If they feel chilly they’ll run under for a 
moment, but as soon as they’re warm enough they’ll 
run out again. They’ll know enough not to stay 
where it’s too hot. Then, you see, around the outer 



1 16 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

edge of this hover there’s lots of space for them and 
they are not so apt to crowd.” 

The next afternoon Uncle John began on the task 
of fixing a place for the brooder. In the orchard 
back of the barn there was a henhouse. The flock 
of twelve hens that had been purchased in the 
fall were living there, but it was a much larger 
building than they needed. One end of this, it 
was decided, should be given over to the baby 
chicks. 

It would have been better to have a regular 
brooder house for them, one that was newly built 
and was planned especially for that purpose. But 
there was nothing of the kind on the farm, and it 
seemed best to Uncle John and Aunt Emily not to go 
to the expense of building a new house the present 
season. 

Across one end of the henhouse Uncle John made 
a rough partition, dividing it into two rooms. One 
of these, for the brooder, was about eighteen feet 
square. The other was a little longer. The hens 
protested at the noise and confusion, but after a 
time settled down again. 

The front of the brooder room had a single win¬ 
dow in it. Uncle John took this out and enlarged 
the opening, making it three times as big. He fas¬ 
tened wire across this. On the inside he tacked a 
curtain of burlap that could be raised or lowered. 
The glass sash that he had taken out he fastened 


SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 117 

up outside with hinges at the top so that it could be 
pulled up. 

From the loft of the tool house he brought another 
sash that had once been in use as a storm window 
on the farmhouse. This he placed beside the other 
one. The rest of the opening he left without any 
means of closing except the burlap curtain inside. 
It would be necessary to have that much space for 
fresh air, he said, no matter if it was cold outside. 

The brooder stove he set up in the middle of the 
room. The chimney of the stove he arranged to go 
straight up through the roof. 

Before beginning the work on the partition he 
had cleaned out the house. Now for the brooder 
room he wanted a lot of fine gravel to scatter on the 
floor. But there was none to be had at Apple-top 
Farm that wasn’t covered with snow or frozen up. 
He had not thought of that before winter came. 

Uncle John hitched up Juniper to the wagon and 
drove to Uncle David’s, but there was none there. 
He finally borrowed a load at the next farm beyond. 
The wagon held more than was needed for imme¬ 
diate use in the brooder room, so the rest was piled 
in a corner of the tool room, to be ready for a new 
coating on the floor, later. 

Finally Uncle John and Jim got out the spray 
pump and filled up the barrel with whitewash. Into 
this they dumped a can of strong disinfectant that 
smelled like carbolic acid. With this mixture they 


t 18 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

coated thoroughly the inside of the brooder room, 
ceiling, walls, floor and all. When it was done they 
moved the hens over into that part temporarily and 
gave their quarters a hearty cleaning and spraying. 
When they moved them back the house looked fresh 
and clean. 



Part of the New Arrivals 

About the middle of March a postcard came 
saying that the baby chicks would be shipped on 
the twenty-eighth. They ought to arrive at Mil¬ 
ford the morning of the twenty-ninth. 

On the twenty-second Uncle John started the 
stove in the brooder room, and Aunt Emily set about 
adjusting it. In three or four days she had it work¬ 
ing in good order, although when a cold snap came 



SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 119 

along one night the fire almost burned out. It 
proved to be necessary to watch the stove rather 
closely in order to be sure that everything was all 
right. 

At the last minute Uncle John remembered that 
a little fence of wire screen around the brooder 
stove would be needed for the first few days, to 
keep the chicks from wandering too far away from 
the hover. Jim found the pieces of wire that had 
been left over from making tree protectors. They 
fastened these together into a long strip and set it 
up in a circle a foot or two outside the edge of the 
hover. 

The morning of the twenty-ninth Uncle John 
hitched up Juniper. 

“Can’t I go along?” asked Peggy. 

“Suppose you and Jim both come,” suggested 
Uncle John. 

They drove to Milford and were waiting in the 
post office when the mail arrived from the morning 
train. 

“I hear ’em!” declared Peggy. There was a 
muffled “Peep! Peep!” that you could just make 
out, coming from somewhere back of the partition. 

Presently five pasteboard boxes were handed out 
to them. In the sides of the boxes round holes 
had been punched. 

“Are they all in there?” asked Jim. 

“Guess they are,” answered Uncle John. 


120 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

With blankets over the boxes to shield them from 
wind the chicks were driven to Apple-top Farm. 
Uncle John carried them at once to the brooder 
room. 

Aunt Emily came hurrying out from the house. 
She had a pan of sour milk ready. The cover was 
taken off the first box and Aunt Emily began to 
lift the chicks out, one by one. Before setting a 
chick down she dipped its beak in the sour milk 
and then held it up for a moment, so that it swal¬ 
lowed the drops of milk that clung to its beak. 

Before long there was a brown, fuzzy mass of 
chicks within the wire fence that surrounded the 
brooder. Some of them remained quiet, huddled 
together. Others began to run about briskly. 
Many scratched at the fine gravel on the floor, just 
as full-grown chickens would do. 

Around the enclosure, close inside the fence, 
Aunt Emily had placed seven or eight small pie 
pans, each with sour milk in it. Over each pan 
she had fitted a circular piece of coarse wire screen 
in such a way that the chicks could drink the milk 
but were more or less prevented from walking in it. 
This was the only food that they were given that 
day. They were hatched with some food they al¬ 
ready had supplied to them out of the egg from 
which they had come. To give them any more for 
the first day or two would be harmful. 

All of the chicks in the boxes were alive when 


SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 121 


they reached Apple-top Farm, but not all of them 
appeared to be well and strong. Several seemed 
dull and listless as if they were too weak to live 
many days. By the next morning five of these had 
died. 

“I don’t think that’s anything out of the ordi¬ 
nary,” said Uncle John. “Five out of five hundred 
isn’t many.” 

For the next few days Aunt Emily and Peggy 
watched the little chicks a good deal of the time. 
They gave them a little rolled oats the second day. 
That was their feed for a while, that and the sour 
milk that was kept in the pans all the time. 

Ten more of the weak chicks died. Three or four 
would be found each morning. The rest seemed to 
be doing well. But on the morning of the day that 
they were seven days old Peggy came running into 
the house. 

“Mamma!” she called, “there are nine chicks 
dead this morning!” 

Aunt Emily went out with her and Uncle John 
soon followed. 

“They’ve caught some sickness, Pm afraid,” de¬ 
clared Aunt Emily. “I don’t know what we can 
do. We’ve fed them just as we were told to. It 
must be something that they catch from one 
another.” 

In another four days the toll of chicks that had 
failed to survive reached a total of fifty. Then the 


122 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

number that they found each morning rapidly grew 
less. In a week the loss had stopped. When the 
trouble was all at an end they had lost sixty-one, 
or a little over twelve per cent. 



Early Eggs Bring High Prices 


About that time Uncle John came back from 
Uncle David’s one evening with some news that 
interested every one. 

“The county agent was there,” he said, “the man 






SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 123 

that the Farm Bureau hires. I told him about our 
chicks and described how the sick ones acted, and 
he said that there wasn’t much doubt but that they 
had the disease that is going through so many flocks 
of young poultry in lots of places. It seemed that 
it’s carried through the egg. Hens have it but they 
don’t show it much.” 

“It was bad enough in our flock, surely,” said 
Aunt Emily. 

“Well, according to the county agent we got off 
easy. He says that lots of farmers lost last year 
twenty-five or thirty per cent and some as high as 
forty or fifty per cent.” 

“Haven’t they any remedy?” 

“The right thing to do is to keep it out of your 
flock. If you know about it you can buy your chicks 
from people who’ve had their flocks tested. Then 
you won’t have any of it.” 

From that time on the chicks grew rapidly and 
seemed strong and well. They were the earliest 
hatched chicks of all in that neighborhood. Many 
farmers, who depended on setting eggs under hens 
in the old-fashioned way, would not have their 
flocks started until the warm weather of spring was 
at hand. Others who relied on incubators disliked 
the work and risk of very early hatching or failed 
to make a success of it because they did not know 
just how to manage the early flock. 

As a matter of fact the task wasn’t easy, at Apple- 


124 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

top Farm or anywhere else. Cold weather made it 
difficult to get the chicks outdoors. Nevertheless, 
Aunt Emily insisted that they must be outside dur¬ 
ing the middle of the day as soon as they had passed 
the critical first period. 

Uncle John had arranged a small door on a level 
with the floor. Outside he built up earth to make 
an incline to the opening. With some poultry wire 
he made a temporary fence to keep the chicks close 
to the brooder house for a few days. 

The first few times Aunt Emily drove them out 
through the small door and shut it to make all of 
them remain outside. She kept them there only an 
hour or less at the beginning, but gradually in¬ 
creased the time. Presently the little door was left 
open all day and was closed only at night. 

Soon Uncle John took down the temporary fence 
and allowed the chicks to range all about. That 
gave them abundant exercise. They were able to 
secure plenty of green food, also. There was never 
any trouble about finding their way back. The only 
risk was the possibility that a hawk might carry one 
off. This did occur one day, but something scared 
the bird away after that and it didn’t come back 
to rob the flock any more. 

Occasionally a chick met with an accident or one 
grew sick. For the most part losses were few after 
the first three weeks. 

Finally, one day when the chicks were six weeks 


SCRATCH FEED AND DRY MASH 125 

old, Aunt Emily said that she wanted to count them 
carefully and see just ho\y many there were. The 
next morning she and Peggy went into the brooder 

room before the little door was opened. Peggy 

« 

arranged a box to cover part of the opening and 
then raised the door a little, so that the chicks could 
go through only one at a time. Even with Peggy 
and Aunt Emily working at the task it was difficult 
to count them. They crowded tightly around the 
opening. When the last one had gone through Aunt 
Emily had counted four hundred and eighteen. 
Uncle John came up at that moment. 

“Some of those cockerels are getting pretty big,” 
he commented. “I think you’ll have some to ship 
in another two weeks.” 

“That’s what we want,” agreed Aunt Emily. 
“Now’s the time, while the price of broilers is high.” 


CHAPTER XI 


A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 

Jim made a discovery. 

He was pulling out boards from a pile in the loft 
of the tool house. It was at the time when Uncle 
John and he were preparing the partition in the 
henhouse so as to make a brooder room. In a dark 
corner of the loft, where the light from the single, 
cobwebby window could hardly penetrate at all, 
Jim found beneath the boards what seemed to be a 
metal trough, like a flat pan several feet long. 

“Dad/’ he called, “come up and see what this is!” 

Uncle John joined him and together they dragged 
the pan out from under the boards and over to the 
window. 

“Well, what do you think of that!” exclaimed 
Uncle John. “I remember it, just as sure as any¬ 
thing! It belonged to my dad, and we put it up 
here the spring before we sold the farm. Til bet 
it’s been here ever since, and nobody ever paid any 
attention to it.” 

“But what’s it for?” persisted Jim. 

“Why, it’s a sap pan: for boiling maple sap, to 
make sirup.” 


126 


A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 127 

Uncle John stood it up on end in front of J:he 
window and looked it over carefully from top to 
bottom. 

'‘There’s just one place,” he announced. “Down 
here at this corner there’s a hole. Looks as if the 
roof of the tool shed had leaked some time and the 
water had dripped on the pan down here and made 
it rust.” 

“Could we fix it?” 

“Sure, we could. ’Twouldn’t take long to solder 
that place. I wonder, Jim,” he continued, “if the 
pails are here, too.” 

Still farther back in the dark corner Jim found 
them and rolled them out to the light. There were 
two lots of them. Each lot included a considerable 
number, placed one within another. 

Uncle John shook them apart and held them up 
to the window, one after another. A few had rusted 
out and were not of any value. The others appeared 
to be all right. They counted them and found 
that there were about three dozen that could be 
used. 

Jim climbed down through the opening that led 
to the main floor of the tool house. Uncle Jim 
handed the pails down to him, one by one. Then 
they lowered the pan through the opening and laid it 
on the workbench. It was about six feet long and 
two and a half feet wide. The sides were low, not 
more than eight inches high. The bottom was quite 


128 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

black and shiny. Around the top a heavy wire was 
set in, to make the pan stiff and substantial. 

“You’ve found it just in time,” said Uncle John. 
“Before long the sap will be running. 



Uncle John Bored the Holes 


“I'll tell you,” he continued, “let’s fix up that hole 
now, before we tell your mother and Peggy what 
we’ve found.” 

Uncle John lighted a gasoline torch and soon had 
a soldering iron hot. He scraped the pan clean 




A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 129 

around the hole. In five minutes the hole was filled 
and the job was done. 

They called Aunt Emily and Peggy and showed 
them the new possession. 

“Where will we get the sap from?” demanded 
Peggy. 

“Why, from maple trees, of course,” replied Jim. 

“Oh, I know that! But where are all the trees?” 

Jim looked at his father. 

“Well, they’re scattered here and there,” said 
Uncle John. “There are three out in front of the 
house, you know. Down along the stone wall below 
the peach orchard there are a few, and there are 
some more by the wall beyond the hayfield. But 
the most of them are in the little wood just beyond 
the pasture across the road. Probably there are 
forty or more, all told.” 

They discussed the question of the best location 
for the sap pan. Since most of the trees to be tapped 
were in the grove beyond the pasture, it would be an 
advantage to do the boiling there, in order to save 
hauling sap. This was especially true because a 
part of the sap would have to be hauled uphill. 

“But we haven’t any wood cut down there,” said 
Uncle John. “We did have, but we hauled it all 
up here. Of course we could take a load or two 
back. And probably there’s some dry, standing stuff 
that we could cut.” 

“How about ’tending the fire, though?” suggested 


1 3 o JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Aunt Emily. “If you set the pan up near the house 
we can all watch it and take care of it. You know 
you'll be away at Uncle David’s a good deal of the 
time.” 

“Probably that’s the sensible plan,” assented 
Uncle John. “It just seemed natural to think of 
doing it down there in the grove; that’s all. It was 
there that we used to do our boiling. But, as you 
say, it would be better up here this year.” 

As soon as there was opportunity Uncle John and 
Jim prepared the place for boiling the sap. There 
was a brick wall in the cellar under the house. At 
some time it had been part of a cistern. They took 
these bricks down, cleaned them off, and wheeled 
them out to a location beyond the woodpile. 

“We’d better not have it too near the house,” said 
Uncle John. “Sparks might blow around and set 
something afire.” 

They arranged the bricks in a long, low support 
for the pan, with room enough underneath to build 
a fire. One end they left open for feeding in wood. 
The other end they bricked in, bringing their struc¬ 
ture up to a base on which a tin pipe could be fitted 
for carrying off the smoke. There were lengths 
of old pipe at Uncle David’s that would do. When 
the pipe was in place they wired it to a post to keep 
it from blowing down. 

From the loft of the tool house they brought down 
three wide, clean boards. These were intended to 



A Corner of the Maple Grove 






A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 133 

serve as a cover for the pan when it rained. The 
rest of the time it would be open, in order that the 
sap might evaporate more rapidly. 

On a low, short sled that had come to them with 
the farm, they fastened a barrel. The top of the 
barrel was removed, so that you could readily pour 
sap into it or dip it out. 

The next time Uncle John went to Milford he 
brought out with him several dozen small, iron 
spouts. They were about three inches long and as 
thick as your first finger. They tapered toward one 
end and near the other there was a short wire hook. 

“Now we’re all ready for the right weather,” an¬ 
nounced Uncle John. 

“Does it have to be warm?” asked Peggy. 

“Warm and cold, both. Frosty and crisp at night, 
but sort o’ warm in the middle of the day. That’s 
what starts the sap flowing. If it turns too warm 
it won’t flow any more.” 

A few days later Uncle John sent Jim and Peggy 
early to bed. 

“We’ll get up early to-morrow morning and tap 
some of our trees,” he promised. 

Before it was really light in the morning Uncle 
John had hitched Juniper to the sled and had loaded 
the stacks of pails on it. When Jim and Peggy 
came out he was waiting for them. 

“Maybe we’ll get fooled,” he said, “but I think 
the sap will start to-day.” 


134 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

They drove to the trees in the woods beyond the 
pasture. In some places there was snow, while in 
others the ground was bare. The sled ran easily 
and silently on the snow. On the bare ground one 
would think that Juniper would find it hard to 
drag, but it wasn’t heavy and he seemed not to 
mind. 

Uncle John began tapping the trees. He selected 
a smooth place in the bark and bored a hole two 
or three inches deep. Into this he drove one of the 
little iron spouts. From the hook fastened to the 
spout he hung a pail. 

“But there isn’t anything running out of the 
spouts,” complained Peggy. 

“Wait till it warms up a bit,” said her father. 

“Look!” said Jim. “Here are some old holes in 
these trees, just like the ones we’re boring.” 

When they had tapped the largest trees in the 
grove and had used up most of the pails, Uncle John 
suggested that they go back to the house for break¬ 
fast. He unhitched Juniper and took him back with 
them, leaving the sled standing in the grove. Jim 
and Peggy carried the pails that they hadn’t yet 
used, together with the spouts and the brace and 
bit. 

As soon as breakfast was over they tapped the 
three trees that stood in front of the house and 
those below the peach orchard. When Uncle John 
drew the bit out of the hole of these last trees drops 


A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 135 

of sap began to run, and as he hung the pail on 
the hook you could hear the drops falling into it. 

Peggy slipped away as they were finishing. In 
a few minutes she came back, out of breath. 

“It’s running!” she called. “It’s running fast 
down there in the woods!”’ 

“Looks to me as if I’d have to beg some time off 
these next few days,” laughed Uncle John. 

At noon they hauled in the first load, poured it 
into the pan, and started the fire underneath. Uncle 
John had to go back at once and bring up more sap. 
Some of the pails were more than half full, and 
the barrel wasn’t large enough to hold it all in one 
trip. 

“It seems just as thin as water,” commented 

Peggy- 

She and Jim brought a dipper from the house and 
tasted it. 

“Why, it doesn’t taste much!” she said. 

“Wait a little,” said Uncle John. “It has to boil 
down first.” 

“How much sirup will a barrel of sap make?” 

“Only about a gallon or so. We used to reckon 
about forty gallons of sap to a gallon of sirup.” 

By evening the liquid in the pan had begun to 
take on some of the color of sirup, but it still tasted 
watery. In fact it was only by using your imagina¬ 
tion that you could believe it would ever be sirup. 
On the other hand, the sap had run so briskly that 


136 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

the big pan was more than half full, and the barrrel 
was waiting to be emptied. 

Uncle John decided that the fire should be kept 
going briskly through the evening at least. So he 
got the seat from the wagon, placed it on two pieces 
of cordwood, and settled himself to tend fire until a 
late bedtime. 

In the morning when they went out and lifted off 
the boards that Uncle John had laid across the pan 
when he left it in the night the liquid looked golden 
brown and gave off a delightful odor. Peggy ran 
for a cup and a spoon. They all sampled it and 
found that it was gaining an unmistakable flavor. 

At the last minute Uncle John came to the con¬ 
clusion that they ought to buy new cans to put it in. 

“We’ll have some to sell,” he said. “Unless the 
sap stops running too soon we ought to have a lot 
more than we’ll need for ourselves. The only right 
way to do is to put it in nice new cans. Then we 
can label it and get a good price for it.” 

He telephoned to Milford and left word for Old 
Eben to bring out a supply of cans when he came 
with the mail. 

The first thing that morning the barrel had to be 
emptied, in order to collect the sap from the pails 
that were already beginning to fill. 

“We ought to take out first what’s in the pan,” 
said Aunt Emily. “We can put it in kettles and 
finish boiling it in the house.” 


A HARVEST FROM TREE TRUNKS 137 

So she filled the kettles and two or three pails 
and began boiling it down on the kitchen stove while 
Uncle John started the big pan over again. 

When Jim and Peggy came back from school in 
the afternoon Aunt Emily called them to come and 
look.. In two big preserving kettles on the back ot 
the stove was a shining, light brown liquid that you 
could smell when you first entered the room. Aunt 
Emily set aside a pitcher of it to have with hot bis¬ 
cuits for supper. 

Old Eben had brought the new cans. There were 
two sizes; some holding a quart and some half a 
gallon. Aunt Emily had scalded them out with boil¬ 
ing water. “Let's use quart sizes for this," she said. 

She filled them, one after another, with the hot 
sirup. There were fifteen of them when she had 
finished. Jim and Peggy fitted the corks into place. 

“Why, we’ll have dozens and dozens of them be¬ 
fore we get through!" exclaimed Peggy. 

“You can’t be sure," replied Aunt Emily. “It 
isn’t always good sap weather like this." 

That night after supper Uncle John said that 
he was going to make the round of the pails because 
it looked like rain. He started out and brought 
in all the sap that there was, pouring it all into the 
pan. Before midnight the rain began. It con¬ 
tinued heavily until almost morning. Then the 
clouds cleared away and when Jim and Peggy came 
down the sun was shining. 


138 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Let's go around to the pails before breakfast," 
suggested Uncle John. 

“Don't you want Juniper?" asked Jim. 

“Never mind now. We'll see," said Uncle John. 

They looked in the first pail, on one of the trees in 
front of the house. 

“Why, it's half full already!" exclaimed Peggy. 

“But the sap isn't running," said Uncle John. 

Peggy looked at him and then at the pail. Uncle 
John lifted the pail from the hook and held it so 
that the sunlight shone in it. The liquid in it was 
grayish in color and there was dirt in the bottom. 

“It’s just rain water," said Uncle John. “Part 
of it is what fell into the pail and part ran down 
the trunk and out over the spout." 

He poured it out on the ground. 

“Will you have to empty all of them?" asked 
Peggy. 

“I think it's best,” replied her father. 

Not much sap ran that day or the day following. 
Then the weather turned more favorable again and 
for a week they had their hands full. Finally it 
suddenly turned warm and the buds on the trees 
seemed about to open. 

“That will be about all we’ll get this season," re¬ 
marked Uncle John. 

On shelves in the pantry there were four dozen 
one-quart cans of sirup and two dozen two-quart 
cans, all filled. 


CHAPTER XII 


CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 

In the midst of the busy preparations for spring, 
Uncle John reminded Jim and Peggy of a promise. 
But it was a promise that he had made to them, not 
one that they had given him. 

“Remember when we cut off the limbs from those 
skyscraper apple trees ?” he asked. “I spoke of 
grafting over some of our trees. You wanted to 
know how grafting was done and I said Fd show 
you, some time. ,, 

“That was Jim that asked about grafting,” sug¬ 
gested Peggy. 

“Well, whichever one of you it was, you were 
both there, and I said I could show you how it was 
done more easily than I could tell you. It's time 
now to do what I had in mind. To-morrow’s Satur¬ 
day and you’ll be home from school. I’m going to 
try to find a chance to do it, some time in the day.” 

At noon Saturday when Uncle John came back 
from the work that he was doing for Uncle David 
he brought with him a bundle of slender twigs about 
a foot and a half long. 

“Guess I didn’t tell you I had these waiting,” he 

139 


i 4 o JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

remarked. “I cut them last fall from one of Uncle 
David’s trees. They’ve been wrapped in burlap 
and stored in his big icehouse, buried under the 
sawdust.” 




Cions and Nippers 


“Are they for grafting?” asked Peggy. 

“Yes, they’re cions. These are the twigs that 
we’re going to try to make grow on another tree. 

“We must get something else ready,” he con¬ 
tinued, “and that’s grafting wax. I think we’d bet¬ 
ter start it right now.” 



CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 141 

From the kitchen cupboard he brought a small 
bundle that Old Eben had delivered with the mail a 
few days before. In it were two small packages. 
One of these, Uncle John said, contained beeswax; 
the other resin. 

The resin he emptied into an old saucepan and 
melted it carefully over the fire in the kitchen stove. 
After it had become liquid he added the beeswax 
and kept the mixture warm until that was melted. 
He took care, though, not to let it get hot enough 
to boil. 

“We want our tallow, now, too,” he said. “If 
you'll look in the pantry, Peggy, you'll find it on 
a shelf next to the window. It's just a small 
package.” 

This Uncle John dropped into the saucepan, stir¬ 
ring the mixture until all was melted. 

“Now we'll pour it out,” he announced, “and let 
it cool, while we eat dinner.” 

He filled a pan half full with cold water and 
slowly poured the warm liquid from the saucepan 
into the water. It didn’t mix with the water but 
remained by itself, gradually hardening. 

As they ate dinner Uncle John told them about 
the bundle of cions. 

“They came from a Gravenstein tree at Uncle 
David’s,” he said. “It’s one of the trees in the 
orchard where you helped to harvest the apples a 
year ago last fall.” 


142 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“I know/’ interrupted Jim. “They're a striped, 
red apple. They’re good to eat.” 

“Yes, they are a standard variety of fall apple. 
So far as I know there isn’t any on this place, unless 
there might be one in the young orchard that isn’t 



Making the Cleft for Grafting 


bearing yet. There’s not supposed to be any there, 
for that is said to be a solid block of Baldwins.” 

“You remember that sour apple out there in the 
hayfield,” he continued, “the first one that we tackled 
when we cut off the big limbs? The fruit of that 
isn’t much good. In fact it isn’t worth anything 




CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 143 

at all to sell. You might get people to take a few 
of them for cooking, but the price would be low. 

“What I want to do is to graft over that tree to 
Gravenstein. We couldn't do it all this year, for 
the tree is too big, even with those limbs cut off. If 
it was a small tree we could work it over in one sea¬ 
son, but a large tree requires two or three years, 
doing part each season." 

When they had finished dinner Un-cle John got 
the pan containing the grafting wax and took out 
the mass of wax, squeezing it into a ball. Then he 
worked it in his hands, pulling it as one would pull 
taffy, until it had a grainy appearance. Before he 
did this he greased his hands, so that the wax 
wouldn't stick to them. 

From another package that Old Eben had brought 
he took a curious iron tool. It was about twelve 
inches long and had a wooden handle, like that of 
a large knife. A part of the iron was widened out 
so that it looked something like the blade of an ax, 
except that the blade was longer and not so deep, 
and it was thin instead of thick. The edge of this 
was sharp. Beyond that the iron turned at right 
angles and was shaped like a short wedge. 

Uncle John went to the tool house and selected a 
piece of seasoned hardwood to serve as a mallet. 
He brought back with him, also, a saw with small 
teeth. 

“Now we're all ready," he announced. Carrying 


144 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

the bundle of cions, the grafting iron, the wax, the 
saw, and the mallet they walked across the hayfield 
to the tree that had lost its tall limbs. 

“We forgot a ladder, after all,” laughed Uncle 
John. He went to the barn and brought a step- 
ladder. 



Waxing the Stub 


“Guess we might as well begin with this branch 
right here,” he said, taking hold of a branch about 
two inches in diameter, growing at the height of his 
head. 

He sawed it off, square across. Nearer to the 



CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 145 

trunk there was a fork, so that the whole limb was 
made up of three branches, each about the size of 
the one that was to be grafted. 

“We’ll do these others some time,” said Uncle 
John, “but not this year. One of them will be 
due next year, and the third one the year fol¬ 
lowing. That’s the way we’ll work with the whole 
tree.” 

He held the sharp edge of the grafting iron 
against the stub of the branch and struck the iron 
two or three blows with the mallet. This split the 
stub down the middle. Then he took the iron out, 
turned it over, and forced the wedge-shaped part 
into the split stub, so as to open the cleft. Since 
the wedge was only an inch or less wide while the 
branch was considerably wider a space was opened 
in the cleft on each side of the iron. 

The next task was to set a twig from the bundle 
of cions in each one of these two spaces. If prop¬ 
erly set, these two twigs ought to grow. 

Uncle John pulled out a twig from the bundle 
and looked it over. With his pocketknife he cut 
off the lower part of it, making his cut about an 
inch and a half below a firm, plump bud. This 
part of the twig he now trimmed to the shape of a 
wedge that would just fit nicely into the cleft in the 
branch that had been split. 

He then carefully placed it in position, making 
sure that the outer margin of the twig was just even 


146 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

with the outer edge of the bark on the branch. The 
bud just above the tapered part pointed outward. 



Grafts Well Started 


“The thing to watch out for,” he said, “is to have 
the growing layer of the cion exactly in line with the 
growing layer of the branch. That’s what is called 
the cambium layer.” 



CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 147 

The tip end of the cion he cut off smoothly, so that 
the whole length of it was about five inches. Into 
the other end of the cleft he fitted the other cion. 
He then removed the grafting iron, allowing the two 
halves of the split stub to press tightly against the 
cions. 

Next he worked a part of the ball of wax into a 
slender strip like a ribbon. With this he could cover 
the bare stub of the branch and the split on each side 
of it, making the wax thick and solid where the cions 
projected from the stub. 

“That will keep out moisture,” he said, “and 

anything that might harm the place where they 

• • >> 
join. 

“But you’ve covered up the buds on the cions right 
next to the stub,” objected Peggy. 

“That won’t matter. If the cion grows the bud 
will push out through the grafting wax.” 

Finally Uncle John pinched off two little round 
balls of the wax and stuck one on the tip end of each 
cion. 

“Do you put in two cions so as to get a forked 
branch?” asked Jim. 

“No. We want only a single branch. If both 
cions grow we’ll choose the one that appears to be 
strongest and cut off the other one close to the 
stub.” 

The whole operation of preparing the stub and 
placing the cions in position had taken only a short 


148 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

time—hardly as long, in fact, as it takes to tell about 
it. Uncle John now selected other branches and 
treated them the same way until he had grafted a 
considerable part of the tree. There were still some 
cions left in the bundle. These he used on a smaller 
tree near by, another one that was of poor variety. 

When he h^d finished he sat down on a lower step 
of the ladder and looked at the first tree he had been 
at work on. It had an odd appearance, with the 
stubs here and there, and out of each stub two short 
twigs projecting, like the tines of a fork. 

“Did you know,” said Uncle John, “that all the 
apple trees that you buy have been grafted?” 

“It’s a fact,” he continued. “You see, what the 
nurseryman does is to buy little seedling trees. He 
cuts these ofif close to the roots and grafts on a twig 
of the variety that he wants. The graft isn’t made 
in exactly the same way as these we’ve been doing, 
and he uses only one twig to a stock, but the prin¬ 
ciple is the same. 

“He can’t raise the varieties he wants from seeds, 
you know, because fruit trees can’t be counted on 
to come true from seed. We were talking about 
that this winter, weren’t we? 

“The seedling roots furnish food and water for 
the cion. After a year or two you wouldn’t notice 
that the tree had been grafted unless you looked 
closely at the stem next to the roots. There may 
be a little crook in it at that place.” 


CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 149 

“Are all kinds of fruit trees grafted?” asked 
Peggy. 

“Some of them are, and some are budded. 
They usually bud peaches and plums and cherries.” 



Apple Seedling that Has Been Grafted 


Uncle John cut off a small section, about an inch 
in diameter, from one of the branches that he had 
sawed from the apple tree. 

“Suppose this is the stub of the seedling that we 
are going to bud,” he suggested. 

With the blade of his pocketknife he made a cut 
lengthwise in the bark and another across the upper 





150 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

end of it, so that the two cuts looked like a 
capital T. 

“Now we’ll call this the bud-stick,” he continued, 
picking up a discarded part of a cion. 

Starting his knife just above one of the buds on 
the cion he slipped the blade down and then out, 
thus cutting off the bud and a little oval piece of 
bark and wood with it. 

With the point of his knife he loosened the bark 
alongside the T-shaped cut. Then he carefully in¬ 
serted the bud into this space, with the bit of bark 
to which the bud was attached under the bark flaps 
of the T. 

“Next we’d need to wrap it,” he said, “so as to 
hold it in position for two or three weeks until the 
bud and the stock have begun to grow together. The 
nurseryman wraps it with raffia. That’s made of 
strips from a kind of palm. After two or three 
weeks he has to go ’round and cut off the wrapping, 
because if he didn’t the bud and stock wouldn’t be 
able to grow properly. 

“I’ve never seen them do all the different kinds of 
plant propagation,” continued Uncle John, “but I 
know that there are a good many different ways. 

“For instance, take bushes that grow in a clump. 
Sometimes they heap earth in a mound around the 
base of the clump. That makes the bush throw out 
a good many new shoots at the base. After these 
shoots are well started the earth is removed. Then 


CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 151 

the clump can be divided into a number of separate 
bushes. 

“Another way is a method that's spoken of as lay¬ 
ering. A shoot is fastened down near the ground 
and some earth is piled on it at the joints. Roots 
will start at those places and a new shoot spring up 



Layering 


Then the part that connected it to the old plant is 
cut off." 

“Isn’t that the way that mamma said that straw¬ 
berry plants spread, by themselves?" asked Peggy. 

“It’s nearly the same. The tip of a runner from 
the strawberry plant bends over to the ground and 
takes root of its own accord. Then all that the 
grower needs to do is to cut off the runner, take 



152 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

up the new plant and set it out wherever he wants 
it. There is one kind of raspberry that does the 
same thing. The cane bends over until the tip 
touches the ground. Then it takes root there. 

“With some plants the runner goes underground. 
It’s called a root stalk. It keeps growing longer 
and longer, and every once in a while it sends up 
shoots above ground and forms roots. Some of our 
worst weeds spread that way. If you plow the 
ground where they are you just break these up into 
separate plants, and each one will continue to grow 
and spread. You have to use some means to haul 
them all out on top of the ground so that they will 
dry out and die. You see, nature has good means 
of making plants grow and increase in number.” 

“When we plant potatoes, is that plant propaga¬ 
tion?” asked Peggy. 

“Yes. A potato is really food supply that the 
plant has stored up to take care of new plants. Each 
eye in the potato is a bud that might grow to be a 
plant, using the substance of the potato to live on 
until it had roots of its own. Bulbs, too, are stored 
food, that the plant would use. That’s what onions 
are. Grain, such as corn or wheat, is largely food 
that the plant has made ready. We find it already 
stored and we use it for our own food supply.” 

“We rob the plant, then, don’t we?” speculated 
Peggy. 

“Well, we make use of it. But we save a lot of 


CIONS AND GRAFTING WAX 153 

the seed and sow it in fields that we have prepared 
for it. Perhaps there are more of the plants in the 
end than there would have been if we didn't do that. 

“Often, too," he continued, “we propagate in 
ways that the plant itself couldn’t follow. You 
know there are many plants that you can multiply by 
simple cuttings. If you prepare a moist, suitable 
place for them to start in you can take a small piece 
of the stem, plant it, and presently roots will form 
at the lower end and a new top will form. That’s 
the plan that is followed in multiplying some of our 
flowering plants. 

“The plant couldn’t do that very well—could it— 
any more than it could do grafting or budding,’’ 
laughed Uncle John. 

“In fact,’’ he continued thoughtfully, “the whole 
plant world is a good deal different from what it 
would be if plant breeders and propagators hadn’t 
been at work. It is more beautiful and more useful. 
Of course there were useful and beautiful plants 
to start with. But probably many of them would 
still be so rare that no one would ever know of them. 
All of our orchards and gardens and our fields of 
grain are made possible by plant propagation.’’ 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 

“Jim,” said Uncle John, “we must get the spray 
pump ready.” 

Already the spring duties at Apple-top Farm were 
growing so numerous that the time seemed crowded. 
There were no longer any days when you could 
choose what you’d like to do. The work itself did 
the choosing for you. Each morning there were 
definite things to be done, and they were the kind 
of tasks that couldn’t wait until some other day. 

The chicks in the brooder house must be fed and 
watered and the stove kept working properly. The 
plants in the hotbed and those in the kitchen win¬ 
dows required regular attention to make sure that 
they were not suffering from too much or too little 
moisture and that they had the right amount of heat 
or ventilation. The maple trees had already yielded 
their harvest. 

And now Uncle John announced that it was time 
to fix up the spray pump! 

“Why do you spray now, daddy?” asked Peggy. 
“There aren’t any leaves on the trees yet, and we 
haven’t any garden planted.” 

154 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 155 

“IPs the fruit trees that we need to attend to,” 
said Uncle John. 

“There aren’t any bugs now, are there?” asked 
Peggy. 

“There are always bugs,” laughed her father. 
“Of course it’s true that you don’t find them doing 
much damage until later, when the leaves are out, or 
after the fruit has come. That’s when we’ll really 
have our round with them. They’ll know when our 
garden is planted, all right. 

“But there are insects in an orchard in winter as 
well as in summer. There are some kinds that we 
can kill easily by spraying now before the leaves are 
out that we couldn’t kill at all, or not very well, a 
little later. 

“Besides that, there are diseases of fruit trees 
that are best fought by sprays that are applied be¬ 
fore the buds open. The county agent that I talked 
with at Uncle David’s told me to apply the dormant 
spray even if I didn’t do any other. That’s what 
they call the earliest spray, because the trees 
are still dormant. They haven’t put out their 
leaves.” 

“How can you manage it, John, without any 
help?” asked Aunt Emily. 

“I can’t. But Andy Wiggin is going to begin 
work soon at Uncle David’s, and meanwhile he’s 
promised to come up here and work with me for 
two or three days until we get this job done.” 


156 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“I went and looked at the little trees,” said Jim. 
‘‘The rabbits and mice didn’t gnaw them any. Guess 
our tree protectors kept them away. But they 
gnawed two or three of the other trees in places. 
Just a little. Not enough to hurt them much.” 



Applying the Dormant Spray 


“Then it’s a good thing we put wire around the 
small ones,” suggested Uncle John. “A rabbit 
wouldn’t have to do much gnawing on one of those 
little ones to finish it.” 

Friday afternoon when Jim came home from 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 157 

school his father had the spray pump pulled out into 
the middle of the barn floor and was taking it apart. 

“IPs bound to need some new packing/’ he said, 
“after standing there all winter.” 

But it was more than new packing that the outfit 
needed, as they found when they had removed the 
parts. A valve was broken. Probabl} it had been 
so for a long time. There was no possibility of 
using the pump until a new valve had been secured. 
The pump could not force any liquid out unless it 
had sound valves in working order. 

Uncle John telephoned to the dealer at Milford 
to ask him to send out a new part by Old Eben the 
next day. But he found that this was an old style 
pump and was no longer carried in stock. It would 
be necessary to send to the factory for a new 
valve. 

There was no help for it. The delay was unfor¬ 
tunate. The peach trees were already at the stage 
when the spray could not be delayed. The plum and 
cherry trees were not far behind. 

If the weather should happen to be cold, so that 
the apple trees did not develop rapidly and if the 
new valve arrived promptly, the spraying of those 
trees could be done in time. But if it was too long 
delayed or if warm weather made the buds open, 
the opportunity would be lost and it might be that 
the apple crop would suffer. 

“It’s a good lesson,” said Uncle John. “I ought 


I 


158 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

to have looked that pump over weeks ago and made 
sure that it was all right.” 

The few days that followed were anxious ones. 
For a day or two it was warm. Then it turned cold 
again and the trees were at a standstill. Each day 
Old Eben reported that the new part had not ar¬ 
rived yet. Uncle John thought of buying an en¬ 
tire new outfit, but that meant spending a consid¬ 
erable sum, and the dealer in Milford felt sure 
that he would hear from the factory before 
long. 

At last it grew much warmer. The peach trees 
had passed any possibility of the dormant spray. It 
happened that not many of them were going to bear 
fruit. There seemed to be some condition that made 
them do poorly. The buds on the cherry and the 
plum trees had burst. 

But it was the apple crop that counted for most. 
On those the buds had not opened, but they showed 
wide margins of green. 

Finally, one day, the new valve arrived. It 
seemed as if even the apple trees were too far ad¬ 
vanced to receive a dormant spray. Uncle John 
was in grave doubt what to do. 

He called the county agent on the telephone and 
asked his advice. The agent said that in many 
places the growth was too far advanced to make it 
safe to spray. He asked Uncle John to describe the 
condition of the trees, and then, on second thought, 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 159 

offered to drive to Apple-top Farm, the first thing in 
the morning, and look at the trees, himself. 

Uncle John walked down to Uncle David’s after 
supper and arranged with Andy Wiggin to be on 
hand the next day. It would be Saturday, so Jim 
and Peggy would be there, too. 



San Jose Scale as It Appears Through a Lens 


Before breakfast the next morning Uncle John 
and Jim got out the spray material. 

“Maybe we won’t be able to use it this time,” said 
Uncle John, “but we’ll have it ready.” 

The liquid for the spray was in a small barrel. It 
was labeled “Lime-sulphur” and there were printed 
directions telling how much to dilute it with water 



i6o JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

for dormant spraying and how much for use on trees 
in leaf. 

“If we can’t put on the strong spray maybe we can 
put on the weak one,” suggested Jim. 

“Yes, but it wouldn’t serve the same purpose,” 
replied his father. 

They turned the barrel on its side, rolled it up 
an incline made of two planks, and got it into posi¬ 
tion on a strong box, to serve as platform. Uncle 
John fitted a spigot into it, so that the liquid could 
be drawn off, as needed. 

“Let’s fill up the tank,” said Uncle John. 

They measured out five gallons of the liquid and 
poured it into the barrel of the sprayer. The rest 
of the space in the barrel they filled up with water. 
Then they tried a few strokes of the pump, to see 
if it worked all right. Everything seemed to be in 
good order. 

“All we need is to be told to go ahead,” laughed 
Uncle John. 

Before breakfast was over Andy Wiggin came. 
Within half an hour afterwards the county agent 
drove into the yard in his car. The men walked 
out to the young orchard and back through the trees 
at the rear of the barn. When they came back the 
county agent looked at the sprayer and then at Uncle 
John and shook his head. 

“I don’t know what to advise you,” he declared. 
“The trees are farther along than they ought to be 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 161 


for a dormant spray. There’s a good deal of green 
showing and it will be burned by the spray ma¬ 
terial. On the other hand you ought by all means 
to have this application to control scab. It’s been 
bad in this section for the last two or three years, 
and it’s likely to be the same this year. You can’t 
tell. It’s possible that it might not show up much, 
especially if it’s a dry season, but the chances are 
that it will be on hand. Besides that, there’s some 
scale.” 

“Is there anything that we can do later?” asked 
Uncle John. 

“You can do something to help hold the scab in 
check by a later spray, but this first application is 
the most important step. The others just follow it 
up and continue the protection. For the scale this 
is the only spray that amounts to anything.” 

“Would it hurt the trees badly to put the spray 
on?” 

“I wouldn’t say that it would do them perma¬ 
nent harm. It’s this year’s growth that might be 
injured. It might hurt it a good deal and it might 
be all right. It’s a guess.” 

Uncle John turned to Andy Wiggin. 

“Hitch up JunipeH” he said. “We’re going to 
spray!” 

In ten minutes the outfit was at work, Andy Wig- 
gin doing the pumping and driving while Uncle John 
held the nozzle and directed the mistlike spray so 


162 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

as to coat every inch of surface of twig, branch, and 
trunk. There were about twenty feet of hose at¬ 
tached to the pump and thus Uncle John could walk 
about beneath a tree and send the spray up into it 
from points of advantage. 



Plums Injured by Rot 


The county agent was talking with Jim and 
Peggy. 

“Do you know what scale looks like?” he asked. 
They shook their heads. 

“Well, come with me and I’ll show you.” 



THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 163 

He walked with them to the orchard back of the 
barn, stopped beneath one of the trees, and pulled 
down a branch so that they could look at it closely. 

“There it is,” he said, pointing to a section of 
bark. 

“Just those little things that look like gray 
specks?” asked Peggy. 

“Yes, that's it.” 

“I shouldn't think that those could hurt a tree 
much.” 

“It doesn't seem so. But they can. If they are 
allowed to multiply without anything to check them 
it won't be long before there are millions of them 
all over the bark and twigs and even the leaves and 
fruit. 

“You see,” he continued, “the specks are really 
little wax coverings. Under each one is a living 
insect.” 

“Is it under there now?” 

“Yes, it's there all winter. Each one of those 
insects has a slender beak that it pushes down into 
the growing bark and in that way it sucks the sap. 
By spraying now with lime-sulphur at winter 
strength we can kill the scales. If we waited until 
the leaves were out we couldn’t use the spray ma¬ 
terial strong enough, because if we did we'd kill all 
the leaves. Besides, when a tree is out in leaf you 
can't be sure of coating all the twigs and branches 
because the leaves are in the way.” 


164 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“What’s lime-sulphur made of ?” asked Jim. 

“Just sulphur and lump lime and water, boiled to¬ 
gether in the right proportions. Some growers make 
it themselves. There are some that boil the ma¬ 
terials in a big iron kettle, but a better way is to 
boil with steam. They run steam into a barrel or 
tank. But unless you have good arrangements for 
making the spray, it’s just as well to buy it already 
prepared. When a man has a big orchard it pays 
him to have his own plant for making some of the 
sprays he needs.” 

“What was that other thing,” asked Peggy, “that 
you told daddy he ought to spray for now ?” 

“The scab?” 

“Yes, that was it.” 

“That’s a disease: what we speak of as a fungous 
disease.” 

“Can we see it?” 

“That would be pretty difficult just now. It is 
presept around the opening buds and probably in 
the growing tissue of young twigs, but it would re¬ 
quire a microscope to make it out. Later, you can 
see its work easily enough. It makes brown spots 
on the leaves. Sometimes a great many of the leaves 
will drop off. But the worst damage that it does 
is the injury to the fruit. It causes a thick, dark 
place in the skin. Where the fruit is badly attacked 
the apples are not much good. It causes a great 
deal of loss.” 



THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 165 

They walked along together through the orchard. 
The visitor stopped and put his hand on a rough, 
dark scar in the crotch of one of the trees where the 
main limbs branched. 


Canker Sometimes Kills Trees 


“That's canker,” he said. “It's caused by a dis¬ 
ease, too. In fact there are several different kinds.” 

“They’ll be spraying over here after a while,” said 
Peggy, “and then they’ll stop all these things that 
hurt the trees.” 


166 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“It would be good if they could do just that,” said 
the agent, “but I’m afraid it isn’t possible.” 

“You see,” he explained, “there are a good many 
diseases that spraying will check. But there are 
others that we don’t know how to control; not by 
any sprays that have been invented so far. Often a 
disease works entirely inside a plant and doesn’t 
come to the surface except once in a long while when 
it forms spores—something like seeds but very, very 
small. In that case it’s hard to see how a spray can 
do any good except as it’s applied when the spores 
are being formed, in order to kill them and prevent 
them from spreading the disease to other plants.” 

“Well, I hope daddy kills the scale and the scab,” 
said Peggy. 

“I hope so, too,” agreed the visitor. “And I hope 
that the spray won’t do too much harm.” 

Two or three days after the spraying was finished 
Andy and Uncle John walked out to the orchard 
behind the barn and looked at some of the trees. 

They could see plainly the effects of the spray. 
The margins of the opening buds where the 
tender green had been visible were now brown and 
shriveled. 

“Looks to me as if it’s hurt them pretty bad,” 
said Andy. 

“Yes,” said Uncle John slowly, “the spray has 
burned them. There’s no doubt about that.” 

They walked on across the hollow to the young 


THE SPRAY PUMP AT WORK 167 

/ 

orchard. Everywhere it was the same. The buds 
that should by now have wide margins of green had 
borders of brown instead. 

“The question is,” remarked Uncle John, 
“whether the heart of the bud has been injured. 
A few days will answer that.” 

Another week furnished the beginnings of an an¬ 
swer and a second week made it positive. After a 
brief period the expanding buds began to show new 
green. The clusters of leaves spread open, still 
with ragged edges and traces of brown on their 
margins, but with ample green surface. They had 
not been killed. 

The final part of the answer came before long. 
Everywhere, except on the little trees, blossom buds 
began to burst open. Presently each apple tree wore 
a robe of white. From far and near bees came to 
visit the blossoms. 

The trees had come through all right. 


CHAPTER XIV 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 

By the time the spraying of the fruit trees had 
been finished the brooder house was ready to yield 
its first returns. 

For several days Aunt Emily had been speculating 
as to the weight of the largest of the cockerels in the 
flock of young chickens. She felt positive, she said, 
that some of them would reach two pounds. They 
had long, strong legs and their bodies were of good 
size. Their combs were developing. So were their 
voices. 

Uncle John drove to Milford and brought back a 
number of shipping crates. They were made of 
thin, tough boards and narrow slats, securely fas¬ 
tened together and bound with wire. There was a 
small door in the top of each one. 

“Let’s weigh some of the largest ones/’ proposed 
Aunt Emily when Uncle John came into the house 
that evening. 

There were spring scales in the kitchen. Uncle 
John got a lantern, Jim carried the scales, and they 
all went out to the brooder house. The. chickens 
had already gone to roost, but as Aunt Emily opened 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 169 

the door and the light of the lantern shone in some 
of them stirred uneasily and one or two hopped 
down to the floor. 



Preparing to Plant the Garden 


Aunt Emily walked quietly to the roosts and care¬ 
fully picked up one of the cockerels while Uncle John 
held the light so that she could see. She carried him 
to the scales and after several trials persuaded him 


170 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

to remain quiet. Sure enough he weighed two 
pounds and two ounces. 

“There are a good many that are bigger than that 
one, I’m sure,” declared Aunt Emily. 

They tried three or four more and found one that 
brought the scales down to almost two pounds and 
a half. 

“We can't ship any to-morrow,” said Aunt Emily. 
“It's Saturday, and they'd arrive at the wrong time. 
But we could send off a crate or two Monday, if we 
can manage to get them to Milford.” 

“I could drive in early Monday morning,” pro¬ 
posed Uncle John. 

When they went back to the house Aunt Emily 
and Uncle John discussed the question of market. 
The farmers in the neighborhood usually sold 
their chickens to a dealer in Milford or shipped 
them to a city about fifty miles away. But the 
market reports in the newspaper showed much 
higher prices at a larger city three hundred miles 
distant. 

Aunt Emily had asked the county agricultural 
agent about this, when he visited Apple-top Farm a 
few days before. She had secured from him the 
name of a dealer in the larger place that he con¬ 
sidered to be reliable. The express charges to the 
more distant point were considerably greater, but 
the difference in price more than made up for the 
added cost of shipping. 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 171 

“Of course they’ll shrink more in the longer trip/’ 
commented Aunt Emily. 

“That’s funny,” remarked Peggy. “What makes 
them shrink?” 

“They always weigh less when they get to the 
end of their journey,” said Aunt Emily. “They 
don’t eat much on the way. And then the strange 
surroundings and the noise must bother them. 

“But, even allowing for shrinkage,” she con¬ 
cluded, “it seems as if we’d receive more for them 
by sending them to the high-priced market. We’ll 
try it, anyway.” 

“If there are many large ones,” suggested Uncle 
John, “we’d better make a good-sized shipment. 
The market’s high now. It’s likely to drop after a 
little, with other folks getting ready before long to 
send in broilers. Ours are extra early and we ought 
to get the top price.” 

When Monday morning came they had four 
crates ready to ship. Aunt Emily was confident 
that there wasn’t a cockerel in the lot that weighed 
less than two pounds. At noon Uncle John came 
back from Milford and reported the weights as 
they had come out when the crates were placed on 
the scales at the express office. Allowing for the 
crates themselves the broilers had averaged two 
pounds and three ounces each. 

“We ought to hear from the dealer by Thursday,” 
said Aunt Emily. “That will be our first real sale 


172 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

from Apple-top Farm, not counting the apple crop 
last fall. Those apples, of course, we didn’t really 
raise ourselves.” 

'‘There will be more sales pretty soon,” said Uncle 
John. “Maple sirup, for one thing. We might 
take some of that to Milford and see what the store 
will give for it. And the plants in the hotbed are 
going to be ready as soon as folks start their 
gardens.” 

The report from the shipment of broilers arrived 
Friday. It was a good return. After counting out 
express charges and the dealer’s commission the 
price received was a little over seventy cents a 
pound. That gave a return of more than a dollar 
and forty cents apiece. 

“To think of a price like that for those small 
chickens!” exclaimed Uncle John. 

“That’s all right!” said Aunt Emily. “They’re 
extra early and they ought to bring a good price!” 

They had already shipped two more crates on 
Thursday, and they decided to make still another 
shipment the following Monday. 

“Now’s the time,” said Aunt Emily. “We’d 
better sell all of them as rapidly as we can.” 

“Aren’t we going to save any to eat?” demanded 
Jim. 

“Well, I’ve been thinking that, too,” commented 
Uncle John. 

“You can save out a dozen,” decided Aunt Emily. 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 173 

“We can let them grow for a while and have them in 
the summer and fall.” 

“Why don’t we let those grow that we’re send¬ 
ing away?” suggested Peggy. 

“They wouldn’t bring as much real profit,” ex¬ 
plained her mother. “For one thing, the price will 



Planting 


be dropping after a time. We’d have to reckon on 
that. Besides, it takes more than twice as much 
grain to raise a broiler to a weight of three pounds 
as it does to bring it to two pounds. The older and 
larger they are the more feed it takes to make a 
pound of grain in weight. So the most profit lies 
in selling them early. 



174 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“You see,” she added, “on most farms they don’t 
try to have the chicks so early, and they haven’t any 
broilers for* the early market. That’s what makes 
the price high.” 

“Well,” remarked Uncle John, “I don’t know 
whether our hotbed and garden can equal your 
chickens or not.” 

Each day, now, Uncle John was watching the 
ground in the garden to be ready to plow it as soon 
as it was dry enough. It was a good location for 
early planting. The soil was somewhat sandy and 
the slope of the land was toward the southeast, so 
that all the warmth of the sun helped to dry it out. 
Twice it rained just when the plot was ready to 
work, and the job of plowing had to be postponed. 

Uncle John was no longer working for Uncle 
David. Apple-top Farm had enough on hand, now, 
to keep one man busy. In fact there was more than 
one man could do, and Uncle John arranged with 
Uncle David to secure the services of Andy Wiggin 
a part of the time each week until the rush was 
over. 

Finally there came several warm, sunny days, 
and the garden was plowed. Three or four loads of 
old manure were hauled out from the barn and 
spread over it. Then it was harrowed with the 
new disk harrow, back and forth, lengthwise and 
crosswise, until the ground was mellow and fine. 

“We ought to have a smoothing harrow to level 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 175 

it off with,” remarked Uncle John, “but we'll 
manage without it this year.” 

Andy Wiggin and Uncle John picked out a piece for 
the potatoes, a section just beyond the peach orchard. 

“I may want to extend that orchard another 
year,” said Uncle John, “and it won’t hurt the 
ground to be under cultivation.” 

Andy started plowing this piece while Uncle John 
made ready to plant the garden. By the time he 
had brought out the seeds, Jim and Peggy came back 
from school and joined him. 

Uncle John had with him the rough plan of the 
garden that he had drawn when they were ordering 
seeds. He had a length of stout cord, also, with a 
stake attached at one end and the rest of the cord 
wrapped around the middle of another stake. 

Beginning at the part of the garden nearest the 
fence that adjoined the grassy yard he set up one of 
the stakes at the edge of the plowed land and un¬ 
reeled the cord until it reached halfway across the 
piece. 

“We’ll have a space down the middle here,” he 
said, “where we can walk.” 

“You know,” he added, “if we didn’t have so much 
work ahead for Juniper to do right now we could 
use him in running some of our furrows for us. In 
that case we’d run our rows the long way of the 
piece. But June has all he can do, with the potatoes, 
and the peach trees, and the young apple orchard.” 



176 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

In the wheelbarrow Uncle John had brought out 
an iron rake, a spade, a hand trowel, and two 
hoes, a wide one and a narrow one. With the nar¬ 
row hoe he made a shallow trench alongside the 
cord. 

“We’ll start with the peas,” he said. “You 
youngsters know how to plant them. I’ll open up 


Two Kinds of Bean Seeds 

the trenches for them, and you plant the seed and 
cover it.” 

He moved the cord to a new location about two 
feet from the first one, and made a second trench, 
while Jim and Peggy dropped the seeds into the 
furrow and covered them with the iron rake. Be¬ 
fore long they had a dozen rows planted. 




SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 177 

Next they planted several rows of beets and 
carrots, and a row of parsnips. With the carrot and 
parsnip Uncle John mixed a few seeds of radish. 

“Those are for markers,” he said. “They’ll come 
up soon and show us where the rows are. The seeds 
that they’re mixed with are always slow.” 

“I know,” said Peggy. “When we tested them I 
thought that they weren’t any good.” 

Beyond the parsnips they planted lettuce and 
radishes, and then onion seeds. By that time it was 
so dark that they couldn’t see to work any longer. 

Andy Wiggin came up with Juniper. 

“I made a good start on your potato field,” he 
remarked. “Maybe I can finish it to-morrow.” 

“Going to harrow it right away?” he went on. 

“Just as soon as we get it plowed,” replied Uncle 
John. 

“Are you figuring on using that small harrow?” 
persisted Andy. 

“That’s all I have.” 

“Well, now, Mr. Harlow,” suggested Andy, “if 
we could get at that piece with a regular two-horse 
harrow we’d gain a lot of time. I can get a harrow 
from Mr. North, because he said so. I’ve got my 
own horse, and I can bring him along. I won’t 
make any big charge for him.” 

Uncle John thought it over. 

“All right, Andy,” he said. “We’ll do it that 
way.” 


178 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

The next morning Uncle John was at work in 
the garden again. Jim and Peggy joined him for 
an hour, but had to leave to go to school. 

Before they left they helped to transplant half a 
dozen flats of lettuce from the hotbed. 

“These will give us some extra early heads,” re¬ 
marked Uncle John. “Perhaps we’ll have some to 
sell.” 

When the children had gone he prepared to set 
out celery plants from the hotbed. Andy Wiggin 
came up with Juniper and ran a furrow down 
the length of the garden in the half that had 
not yet been planted. In this furrow Uncle John 
set out several flats of slender, feathery celery 
plants. 

Then he walked down and talked with Andy. 

“What would you think of taking a chance on a 
row of beans and a little corn?” he asked. 

Andy shook his head. 

“Likely to get frosted,” he commented. “They’re 
too tender.” 

“Yes, I know, but there’s a chance that they 
might get through. If they do, I’ll have early stuff 
to sell while the market is high. If they don’t, I’ve 
lost only a little seed and my time.” 

“Well, on that score you might try it.” 

So one long row of beans and another of sweet 
corn were added to the garden. Six flats of cabbage 
plants from the hotbed made still another row. 


SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 179 


Uncle John had to stop then to look after the duties 
about the farm. 

By evening Andy had finished plowing and har¬ 
rowing the potato piece. 



Cutting Seed Potatoes 


“Going to plant right away, Mr. Harlow ?” he 
asked. 

“Just as soon as we get our seed ready,” said 
Uncle John. “Pve already treated it for scab, and 
we’ll begin cutting to-morrow morning.” 

“Got some good seed?” asked Andy. 

“I think so. It’s some of the certified seed that 








180 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

the county agent told about. I want to dodge the 
blight if I can.” 

Another day of bright weather favored the 
garden-making. Andy and Uncle John began cut- 



Garden Tools 


ting up seed potatoes as soon as breakfast was over. 
Each sat with a pail on the ground between his knees 
and dropped the pieces of potatoes into it. They cut 
them so as to have two or three eyes to each piece. 









SEED BED AND SHIPPING CRATE 181 


When they had several sackfuls ready Andy took 
Juniper and opened a number of furrows the length 
of the potato patch. Uncle John walked along with 
a pail in one hand, dropping the seed potatoes into 
the furrow, spacing them twelve to fifteen inches 
apart. 

Andy had brought out a sack of commercial fer¬ 
tilizer from the barn. He opened this, filled up a 
pail, and followed Uncle John, scattering a handful 
of the fertilizer near each seed potato but taking 
care not to drop it directly on the seed. 

After that he drove Juniper and the plow along 
the rows between the furrows, throwing the earth 
back into the trenches and covering the potatoes. 

When they had planted all that they had cut up 
they tied Juniper to a fence post and prepared more 
seed. By the time Jim and Peggy came home that 
afternoon the patch was almost finished. 

Uncle John stopped at the hotbed as they walked 
toward the house. 

‘TPs time we sold some of our plants,” he said. 

He turned to Andy. “Do you suppose people 
down Milford way are ready to set out plants yet?” 
he asked. 

Andy shook his head. “Not many of them yet,” 
he said. “Only a few gardens are as early as this 
one, Mr. Harlow. But there are some that would 
be ready. And other folks like to buy flats before¬ 
hand, even when their ground isn’t ready.” 

“I think Ell go to Milford with some of them to¬ 
morrow,” said Uncle John. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE EARLY GARDEN 

Uncle John started for Milford early the next 
morning. Aunt Emily got up at daybreak and pre¬ 
pared an early breakfast for him while he did the 
chores and loaded the wagon. 

The body of the wagon he filled with flats from 
the hotbed: early plants that could be set out in 
gardens before danger of late frosts was over. 
There were cabbage plants, lettuce and celery. 
Toward the front of the wagon Aunt Emily had 
placed six flats of small, hardy flowering plants. 

“I don’t know whether you’ll find a sale for these 
or not,” she remarked, ‘‘but I want to send in a few. 
Perhaps if people know about them they’ll buy 
some.” 

‘‘For that matter,” said Uncle John, “I don’t 
know what the demand will be for the vegetable 
plants. Perhaps it would have been better to tele¬ 
phone to Milford before taking them in.” 

‘‘But then,” he added, ‘‘it isn’t the sale of young 
plants that we count on most, anyway. They are 
just that much to be gained, if we can find a market. 
Most of our young plants we want to set out our- 

182 


THE EARLY GARDEN 183 

selves, in our own garden, so as to sell folks the 
vegetables after the plants are full grown/' 

“I don’t know about my flowers,” said Aunt 
Emily. “If we should find that city people begin to 
come out here in autos I think that I can sell lots of 
cut flowers.” 



Shade for Transplanted Tomatoes 


“That would be true of our garden stuff and our 
fruit, too,” remarked Uncle John. 

Before he started for Milford Aunt Emily sug¬ 
gested that he take with him a few cans of maple 
sirup. 


184 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“The stores ought to buy some of it,” she said. 

So they brought out twelve cans, six of them of 
the quart size and six of the two-quart size, and 
packed them under the seat of the wagon. 

“What price shall I ask for them?” asked Uncle 
John. 

“For the maple sirup?” 

“Yes, and the other things, too.” 

“I don’t know. You’ll have to see what the stores 
will give you.” 

When Uncle John came back from Milford about 
the middle of the afternoon he had an interesting 
story to tell. As he drove into town a man who 
passed him at a corner stopped him and asked if 
the plants were for sale. Uncle John said that 
they were. The man explained that it was the 
flowers that he was interested in and asked if Uncle 
John would turn back a block to their house. He 
did so, and sold all of the flowers there at fifty cents 
for each flat. This was the price, the man said, 
that the stores were charging. 

While they were talking a neighbor came across 
the street and joined them. He was interested in 
vegetables and bought two flats each of lettuce and 
celery and four flats of cabbage, paying the same 
price that the other man had paid for flowers. 

The rest of the vegetables Uncle John disposed 
of at two stores, receiving thirty cents for each flat. 
They were not very ready to buy, and said that it 


THE EARLY GARDEN 


185 

was a little too early to sell the plants easily. Most 
people had not yet had their gardens plowed. In 
fact, in most places the ground wasn’t fit to 
work. It would be another week before it was 
ready. 



The First Onions 


The maple sirup was easily sold to the first store 
that Uncle John called on, the quart size bringing 
seventy-five cents each and the two-quart size a 
dollar and a half each. 

The total sales for the trip amounted to twenty- 
six dollars and fifty cents, including three dollars 
for Aunt Emily’s plants. 


186 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

‘‘But it isn’t so much to-day’s sales that pleases 
me,” remarked Uncle John, “as it is the fact that 
the gardens down there are not ready to plant yet. 
It seems to me that our land out here is ’way ahead 
of theirs.” 

“It’s higher ground, for one thing,” suggested 
Aunt Emily. 

“Yes, that would make it freer from frosts. But 
it’s the kind of ground, too. I don’t think that I 
ever noticed it especially before, but the ground 
down there around Milford is pretty heavy and wet 
as compared with ours. It would be slower to dry 
out and warm up. 

“It seems to me that we’d do well not to sell many 
more plants from our hotbed, but plant them in our 
own garden and have vegetables ahead of those that 
people might be raising down there. We can easily 
have early vegetables two weeks sooner than they 
can. 

“There’s just one thing,” he added thoughtfully. 
“If there should be a drouth we’d suffer up here be¬ 
cause our land is sandy. That may be something to 
reckon with.” 

Another problem to reckon with made its first ap¬ 
pearance the next morning. Insect pests began 
their work in the garden. 

When LTncle John went out after breakfast he 
found eight of the cabbage plants that had been 
set out lying on their sides and wilted. They had 


THE EARLY GARDEN 187 

been cut off quite near to the ground. A short stub 
of the stalk just showed above the surface. 

Pulling the earth away from around the stub of a 
stalk Uncle John found a brownish worm curled up 
underneath the surface of the ground. He went on 



Early Radishes 


to the next plant that had been cut off and found 
another worm. 

Jim joined him while he was searching. 

“They’re cutworms, aren’t they?” he said. “Andy 
showed them to me last year at Uncle David’s.” 

“We ought to have scattered poison bait for 
them,” said his father, “before we set out these 
plants.” 


188 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Can you kill them that way?” 

“Yes, that’s what they say. Let’s do it now,” he 
continued, “before we set out any more plants and 
before our seeds come up.” 

They went to the barn, got out half a sack of 
bran, and carried it into the tool house. Jim found 
an empty box and they poured the bran into it. 
Next Uncle John sprinkled onto the bran a part of 
a pound box of Paris green. They mixed the bran 
and the Paris green together thoroughly. 

Uncle John went into the house and came out 
with a pail of water and a jug of molasses. He 
poured a part of the molasses into the water and 
stirred it up. Then he slowly added the mixture 
of water and molasses to the bran in the box, stirring 
it with a stick. 

“Now there,” he said, “we’ll scatter this over the 
ground in the garden for the cutworms to feed on. 
The molasses and bran attract them and the Paris 
green kills them.” 

He picked up the box, but stopped and set it down 
again. 

“This isn’t the right time of day to scatter the 
bait,” he laughed. “Cutworms come out at night. 
If we put out the bait now the sun will dry it all out 
before evening. We’ll have to wait.” 

They covered the box with newspaper and boards, 
to keep the bait moist, and walked back to the 
garden. 


THE EARLY GARDEN 


189 

“I’m going to set out more plants, anyway/’ de¬ 
clared Uncle John. “We’ll scatter plenty of bait 
around them this evening.” 

The next day three or four more plants had been 
cut off. But after that there was no more trouble 
from cutworms. 

As the days passed the garden grew rapidly. 
Presently Uncle John planted several long rows of 
sweet corn and several more of beans. He made a 
second planting of peas and additional sowings of 
beets, lettuce, and radishes. 

The manure that had come from the henhouse 
was mixed with soil in hills for squashes and cu¬ 
cumbers, so that they might have an abundance of 
rich plant food. 

The tomato plants in the hotbeds were at last 
ready to set out. There were not many of them. 
When the seed had been so long delayed they had 
decided not to start very many flats. As a matter of 
fact the plants would have been in ample time for 
sale to stores in Milford, because gardens down 
there were so much later. They could easily have 
sold a hundred flats or more. But they had only a 
few besides what they needed for themselves—not 
enough to make it worth while to drive to Milford 
for these alone. 

“We’ll plant all we have room for,” said Uncle 
John, “and let Andy and Uncle David have the 
rest.” 


190 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Within a few days after the tomato plants had 
been set out Peggy went to the garden to see how 
things were getting along and found the tomato 



Raspberries 


leaves full of tiny holes. Some of the leaves, in 
fact, were shriveling up. There were large numbers 
of tiny, black bugs on the leaves. They were active 
and quick, jumping and disappearing as you stooped 



THE EARLY GARDEN 191 

to look at them. Andy was working near by. He 
came to see them, when Peggy called to him. 

“There’s something just like them on the pota¬ 
toes,” he said. “I’ve seen them on potatoes before, 
but never noticed them on tomatoes.” 

Uncle John came to look. 

“They’re flea beetles,” he said. He went into the 
house to look up a bulletin and find out what to do 
to stop them. 

“You spray them with Bordeaux mixture and lead 
arsenate,” he said, when he came back. “The same 
spray that you use on potatoes for the blight and for 
potato bugs. It’s time we gave our potatoes their 
first spraying,” he continued. “We’ll do it right 
away, and dose these tomato plants at the same 
time.” 

They set about preparing the Bordeaux mixture. 
Uncle John had bought the materials long before. 
He had made ready a spare barrel and in this had 
prepared a solution of copper sulphate of such 
strength that a gallon of the solution equaled a 
pound of the sulphate. In an old wooden tub he 
had slaked lump lime, covering it with water after 
it was slaked so as to keep air away from it. 

The Bordeaux mixture he now made up so as 
to contain eight pounds of the copper sulphate and 
four pounds of the lump lime in the fifty-gallon 
barrel of the sprayer. To this he added four pounds 
of lead arsenate. 


192 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

‘‘That's a double-purpose spray/' he remarked. 
“The Bordeaux stops the blight and the lead ar¬ 
senate stops the bugs." 

“I don't know about stopping the blight," said 
Andy. “It's a mean disease to check." 



Getting Ready for the Cutworms 

He was helping Uncle John pour the materials 
into the spray tank. 

“It's been a bad disease around here," he con¬ 
tinued. “Last year the plants died everywhere, 
about the middle of the summer. There wasn't 
more than half a crop of potatoes. And what there 
were began to rot as soon as they were dug. In 
fact, a lot of them were already rotting when we 






Spraying Potatoes 






. 

































THE EARLY GARDEN 


195 


dug them. We sprayed, too, some of us. As much 
as two or three times. But that didn’t seem to check 
it. We killed the bugs all right, but we didn’t stop 
the disease.” 

“Where did you get your seed?” asked Uncle 
John. 

“Mostly it was what we’d saved ourselves.” 

“Probably it started right there. The disease 
lives over in seed potatoes and spreads into the 
plants from them. That’s why I sent away for this 
seed,” continued Uncle John, “and paid an extra 
price for it. It’s certified to come from a field where 
blight was kept out. Then we’ll spray our patch 
pretty often. Maybe every ten days. What we’ve 
got to do is to keep the growing leaves coated with 
the spray all the time. Our clean seed is supposed 
to help us by preventing the disease from starting 
inside, and the spray is supposed to keep it from 
getting in from the outside.” 

“That takes a lot of time,” said Andy. 

“Yes, there’s no doubt about that. But I want 
to raise a good crop if I can. It will pay, if it 
succeeds.” 

On many of the vines potato beetles, striped 
orange and black, were at work. They were cling¬ 
ing to the stems and the leaves, and had already 
stripped leaf stalks here and there. On some of the 
leaves were orange-colored batches of eggs laid by 
the beetles. 


196 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“After we get this poison on the vines,” remarked 
Andy, “the bugs will find that their food doesn’t 
agree with them.” 

Presently in the garden another pest appeared. 
Tiny green insects began to attack the pea vines, 
clustering on the tender shoots and leaves. 

Peggy discovered them. “They’re just as thick 
as they can be!” she said. 

Uncle John went out to look, and came back to 
prepare a spray for them. 

“They are plant lice,” he explained. “Now I 
wish that I had a hand sprayer. It isn’t practical 
to use the barrel pump for a job like that. All we 
want to apply is just a few gallons.” 

He thought it over. “I’m going to borrow Uncle 
David’s hand outfit for to-day,” he decided, “and 
let Old Eben bring out a small rig for us to¬ 
morrow.” 

He went to Meadowbrook Farm and soon re¬ 
turned with the hand sprayer, a small pump made to 
be placed in a bucket. Jim filled a pail two-thirds 
full of water, and Uncle John measured out a small 
amount of brown liquid that he poured out of a can. 

“That’s an extract made from tobacco,” he said. 
“It’s a contact spray.” 

“Is it poison?” asked Jim. 

“Not in the same way as the lead arsenate. This 
is made for sucking insects. You couldn’t kill them 
with the spray that you use for potato bugs. Plant 


THE EARLY GARDEN 197 

lice have beaks that they push into the leaves and 
stems. A poison on the surface of the leaf doesn't 
bother them any. You have to use something that 
will kill them by coming into contact with their 
bodies. Potato bugs eat the leaves and so you can 
kill them with a poison that they eat along with the 
leaves." 


CHAPTER XVI 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 

All through the warm days of late spring the 
work at Apple-top Farm kept every one busy each 
waking hour. The fruit trees, the garden, the po¬ 
tato patch, and later the hayfields, all claimed atten¬ 
tion. There was never lack of anything to do. 

Soon after the apple trees had come into bloom 
the petals began to fall, and in a few days it was 
time for another spraying. The peach trees, also, 
and the plums and cherries, came in for a visit from 
the spray pump about this time. In the garden there 
was need for watchfulness, and an occasional use 
of the new hand sprayer. 

The garden was growing rapidly. There were 
two or three rainy spells, with bright warm days 
between, and every plant seemed to start up until 
you could almost see it grow. 

The weeds, too, grew just as fast as the other 
plants or sometimes faster. Uncle John had to keep 
fighting them with the hoe. Jim and Peggy helped 
by pulling weeds that started to grow in the rows 
among the vegetables. In some cases this was really 

the most important part of the work, as for instance, 

198 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 


199 

in the rows of young onions where the plants were 
so small that the only way you could make sure that 
they had a chance to grow was by pulling up the 
weeds carefully all about them. 



Young Apple Trees 


“Where do all the weeds come from?” asked 

Peggy- 

“From seeds, mostly,” laughed Uncle John, “just 
like other plants. Ground that has stood idle like 



200 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

this has great quantities of weed seeds in it. As 
long as they are buried under several inches of soil 
they don’t sprout. But many kinds will remain 
alive a long while and every time, you plow or culti¬ 
vate you bring a lot of them to the surface. Then 
they start to grow.” 

“I wonder if the grafted twigs on the apple trees 
are growing,” suggested Peggy. 

They walked out to the field and looked at the two 
trees. Most of the grafts were sending out new 
leaves. Only a few appeared to have died. 

“We’ll let them alone for a while yet,” Uncle 
John decided. “Then we’ll cut out the extra ones 
where both have started.” 

Presently the garden was ready with its first lot 
of vegetables to sell. There were round, red 
radishes and good heads of lettuce. 

Friday evening after school they gathered two big 
baskets full of the radishes and prepared them for 
market, Jim and Peggy helping. The earth was 
washed off clean. Then the radishes were tied in 
bunches and packed in two layers, upside down, 
in shallow square boxes holding a bushel each. The 
red globes with white tips made a bright show. 

The lettuce was cut off just below the surface of 
the ground and packed in similar boxes. 

Early in the morning Uncle John hitched up Juni¬ 
per and drove to Milford. He was back before 
noon. There was no difficulty in selling his produce 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 


201 


to the stores. In fact his vegetables were the first 
ones to reach Milford from the country roundabout, 
and commanded a good price. One of the merchants 



Cherries in Crate 


put a sign in his window at once, reading Native 
radishes and lettuce. The same dealer suggested 
to Uncle John that he drive in with another load 








202 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

the early part of the next week, in addition to his 
Saturday trip. 

When the next load went to Milford there were 
two boxes of young beets in the lot besides more let¬ 
tuce and radishes. Again there was no trouble in 
disposing of the produce. 

After a time there were plums and cherries to 
pick and market. The trees did not do very well. 
The lack of the first spraying had its efifect on both 
the quality and the quantity of the crop. The early 
part of the season was one of unusual rainfall. It 
was this that helped to make the garden grow in the 
rather sandy soil, just as it held back the gardens in 
the heavier soil around Milford. Apple-top Farm 
gained by spring weather of that kind. But rainy 
weather meant favorable conditions for rot of plums 
and cherries, and the lack of early spraying made the 
matter all the worse. A part of the fruit that the 
trees bore was not fit to be sold. 

For marketing the cherries Uncle John had 
bought a lot of quart baskets and some wooden 
crates that would hold thirty-two of the filled 
baskets. 

Jim and Peggy helped to do the picking. 

“You can help,’’ admonished Aunt Emily, “if 
you’ll agree not to make yourselves sick by eating 
too many cherries while you are picking.” 

“How much is too many?” demanded Jim. 

“I’ll tell you,” replied Aunt Emily. “You do the 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 


203 

picking first and don't eat any while you’re doing 
that. If you try any other plan you’ll certainly 
lose count.” 



Picking Cherries 


The cherries were picked into tin pails that could 
be hung by a wire hook from a limb. Jim fixed his 
pail so that it would hook into his belt. All of the 










204 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

fruit could be picked from a stepladder or from the 
ground. 

When a pail was full its contents were transferred 
carefully to the quart baskets, and as the baskets 
filled up they were fitted into the crates with a thin 
wooden partition between layers. They made a 
handsome display. 

The plums were picked in the same way. But the 
baskets for them were oblong in shape and held four 
quarts each. These baskets, like the others, fitted 
into crates that held a bushel. 

Uncle John was intending to sell the fruit at the 
stores in Milford. But the day that they picked the 
first of it he had a telephone call from some one who 
asked about fruit for sale and who said he’d drive 
out to Apple-top Farm to get it. 

He came in his automobile, and proved to be the 
man who had stopped Uncle John and bought plants 
of him the first time he took fiats to Milford. This 
time he bought for himself and his neighbor all of 
the fruit that was ready at that time. 

Within the next two or three days other auto¬ 
mobiles came out, driven by people who wanted to 
buy fruit for their own use. The word had been 
spread around that Apple-top Farm had fruit for 
sale. 

The sales at the farm soon exhausted the supplies 
of plums and of cherries. If the fruit had been 
well sprayed and the crop had been larger, it might 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 205 

have been necessary to take some to town. But as 
it was, Uncle John did not need to go to Milford. 

The same people inquired as to peaches. Later 
they came and bought what there were. But the 
crop was a light one. The trees were not doing 
well. 



Sorting Peaches 


Uncle John looked the trees over many times and 
speculated as to their condition. 

“I don’t think that the trouble is entirely due to 
missing the first spraying,” he said. “It just seems 
that the trees aren’t growing strong and thrifty. 
Of course they’re not young trees any more. But 
they are not so old that they should stop growing.” 

There was no one else in the neighborhood that 
raised peaches, and so no one that could offer good 



206 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

advice. Peach trees had been tried on two or three 
other farms, but the soil at the other places was not 
suitable or the locations were not as favorable as 
that of Apple-top Farm, or possibly the owners did 
not know how to take care of their trees. 

Finally the county agent came by one noon and 
stopped to visit a few minutes. Aunt Emily asked 
him to stay to dinner, and he accepted. He wanted 
especially to see the apple trees that had been given 
the dormant spraying when they were already show¬ 
ing so much green, and he was surprised that they 
looked well. 

“I was afraid it would hurt them a good deal,” 
he said. 

When he looked at the peach trees he said at once 
that they needed food and air. 

“What I mean,” he explained, “is that first of- 
all they need cultivation. The soil ought to be kept 
thoroughly cultivated around them beginning in the 
spring and running up to the middle of summer. 
Then, you might sow a crop of something that will 
make a quick growth before winter. 

“That will provide more food for them because 
the stirring of the soil will make the plant food that’s 
in it more available. But in addition to that they 
ought to have commercial fertilizer every year. 
They are pretty good trees and they can be made 
to bear good crops.” 


WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 


207 

Before he left the agent made an interesting pro¬ 
posal to Uncle John. 

“We plan to have a demonstration day in this 
section,” he said, “some time this summer or fall. 
It would include fruit packing and probably spray¬ 
ing and other care of fruit trees. What would you 
say to having it here?” 

“Do you think I could manage it?” asked Uncle 
John. 

“You wouldn’t need to do anything except let us 
use your farm for the day. The extension service 
and the Farm Bureau will make the arrangements. 
Everybody that came would bring his own dinner. 
There would be two or three experts here from the 
state college.” 

“You certainly can count on my place,” said Uncle 
John. 

The showery weather of spring that had helped 
the garden to start so rapidly gave way in time to 
hot, dry days. For a while this seemed to make the 
plants grow all the faster. The earliest vegetables 
came to maturity so rapidly that the whole family 
was busy taking care of them—in the hours that 
were not occupied with other duties. There were 
the early peas to pick, a long task when you had to 
turn the vines over and look carefully to be sure that 
you had found every pod. There were beets to pull, 
wash free of dirt, and tie in bunches. There were 



A Standard Peach Basket 

“Our land shows drouth quickly/’ he remarked. 
“Heavy soil wouldn’t feel it, but ours does.” 

“It hasn’t really been long since it rained,” sug¬ 
gested Aunt Emily. 


208 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

long, slender radishes. Presently there were early 
carrots. 

But when the dry, hot days had continued for a 
week Uncle John spoke of the need for a shower. 





WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 209 

“Yes, I know, but we need a good shower just the 
same.” 

In the next week there was threatening weather 
twice, and one evening rain came briskly for a few 
minutes. But it was so little in actual amount that 
by the next noon you would not have guessed that 
any had fallen. 

“It didn’t wet the ground an inch below the sur¬ 
face,” Uncle John declared. 

With the rake and the hoes he and Jim kept the 
soil in the garden well stirred on top, so as to make 
a blanket of loose earth that would help to keep the 
moisture in the ground. 

The plants were beginning to show the drouth 
plainly. The pea vines that were due to yield the 
late picking lost their green color and turned quite 
yellow. Lettuce grew tough and sent up seed stalks. 
Radishes suddenly developed tall tops. Carrots and 
parsnips came to a standstill. Cucumber and squash 
vines wilted and many of their leaves turned brown 
and dry. Corn appeared to stop growing. 

The Saturday of the second week Uncle John did 
not make any trip to Milford. There was nothing 
to take to town that he felt was fit to be sold. 

“Besides,” he added, “I’m sure that the gardens 
in that heavy, moist soil down there will not be suf¬ 
fering like ours. It was too wet for them in the 
spring, and now it will be all right.” 

“Can’t we carry water to ours?” asked Peggy. 


210 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“We couldn’t carry enough to be of any use,” 
said Uncle John. “The well out here is low and it’s 
a long way to the spring. Anyway, it takes such a 
lot of water to make any impression on a garden 
that only an engine and a pump, or something like 



Early Cabbage 


that, will do any good. Of course it’s too late to 
think about that this year.” 

He and Jim went out together, down toward the 
spring and the slopes below it. 

“I know what we’d do, another year,” Uncle John 
declared, when they came back. “We’d put a gaso¬ 
line engine at the spring to supply the house and give 



WHEN THE SUN IS HIGH 


21 I 


us some water in the garden for emergency. And 
there’s ground down on the slopes beyond the spring 
where I’d plant some of the late vegetables, things 
that ought to have heavier, moist soil.” 

All through the next four weeks the dry spell con¬ 
tinued, with only two or three showers that were too 
light to be of real help. 

The garden grew parched and some rows of 
tender things died. There were no more sales of 
early produce from it; nothing until the late crops. 

Only the potato field, planted in heavier ground, 
and still diligently sprayed, looked thrifty and well. 
That and the apple trees. 


CHAPTER XVII 


NEW WAYS FOR OLD 

In a few days a letter came from the extension 
office at the state college asking if the Thursday of 
the first week in September would be convenient for 
the demonstration day. Uncle John sent his ap¬ 
proval. Two weeks later the county agent called 
and left a sample of a small poster that he would 
distribute inviting farmers to come to Apple-top for 
the date agreed on. 

“You needn’t make any special arrangements,” 
he cautioned. “If it’s a good day we’ll meet out 
there under one of the old apple trees, and if it’s 
rainy we’ll meet in the barn.” 

“How many will there be?” asked Aunt Emily. 

“Probably twenty or twenty-five. Perhaps more 
if it’s good weather.” 

“Won’t you need chairs?” 

“Don’t bother. They’ll want to stand and walk 
around, most of the time. If they want to sit down, 
there’s the ground, and if we have to go to the barn, 
they’ll have wagon seats and auto seats that they 
can use. 

“They’re supposed to come about ten o’clock,” he 

212 





An Orchard in Cultivation 
























. 










f i< I 










* 





























NEW WAYS FOR OLD 


215 

added, '‘and bring their lunches with them. We’ll 
plan to be through by half-past three or four. I’ll 
be here by eight and there will be two men from the 
college here about the same time.” 

In the days that intervened Uncle John and Andy, 
with Jim and Peggy to help, finished the season’s 
haying. The hay that came from the big, open field 
they hauled to the barn and stowed away in the 
mow. But the grass that they cut in the young 
orchard beyond the spring they raked up and spread 
under the trees. 

“From all I can learn it would seem as if the trees 
over there would do well under the grass-mulch 
plan,” Uncle John said. 

“What is grass mulch?” asked Peggy. 

“It’s a system of orchard management. The idea 
is to keep a layer of grass or hay under the trees, 
as far out as the roots extend. Underneath the 
layer the sod doesn’t grow any more. It dies out 
and the roots decay after a while. The dead grass 
or hay on top is called a mulch and holds moisture. 
There are places where it works pretty well, and I 
have a notion that it would be a good plan in a loca¬ 
tion like that of our voung orchard.” 

The day of the demonstration meeting proved to 
be both an outdoor and an indoor kind. The skies 
were cloudy and it threatened to rain. But no 
showers came in the morning and the people met 
under one of the old apple trees, as planned. Early 


216 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

in the afternoon, however, rain began to fall, and 
the last hour was spent in the barn. 

Because of the threatening weather the number 
that came was small. There were eighteen, not in¬ 
cluding the county agent and the men from the 
college. Most of them were already known to Uncle 
John and Aunt Emily, but a few were strang¬ 
ers. One of them, a man in a large automobile 
with the letters H. W. on the side, nobody had 
seen before. He gave his name as Henry War¬ 
ner, but offered no further information about 
himself. 

When they had gathered under the apple tree 
the county agent introduced the first speaker. He 
took as his subject orchard management, and he 
began talking at once about the very tree that they 
were sitting under. 

Jim and Peggy were sitting back of the rest. 

“He's talking about our own trees!" Peggy 
exclaimed. 

“There are hundreds of trees just like this sky¬ 
scraper all over this county," the speaker began. 
“Most of you have some of them on your farms. 
They've been good trees in their time. And many 
of them can be good producers still." 

He went on to say, then, that first of all a lot 
of these trees needed to be pruned and brought down 
to a better shape and height. 

“That's what daddy said," whispered Peggy. 


NEW WAYS FOR OLD 217 

Some one in the audience pointed out one of the 
trees that Uncle John had trimmed. 

“Yes, that’s a good start,” said the speaker. 

The second thing that many of them needed, he 
went on, was to have a square meal. They were not 
being fed enough. They stood in grass and every 



Bees Are Necessary in Orchards 


year the farmer kept cutting the hay beneath them 
and hauling it away. Under the heavy sod the soil 
didn’t get enough air for plant food to form rapidly, 
and a good deal of that which was formed the grass 
roots secured. 

Often what such trees needed was an allowance 
of commercial fertilizer, instead of permitting the 
grass to absorb most of the available food. 













218 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Take this apple here/’ he said. “The grass has 
been cut and hauled away. It ought really to have 
been left beneath the tree. Other grass from 
round about, or maybe old hay or straw, or even 
weeds, should be spread under the tree until 
there was a covering two or three inches thick. 
Besides that it might be advisable to apply fer¬ 
tilizer.” 

Another plan, he said, would be to plow and 
harrow beneath the tree. That would probably give 
it a setback for a year or two because of breaking 
many feeding roots. But it would recover. Culti¬ 
vation after that would help to feed the tree be¬ 
cause plant food that was in the soil would be made 
over into forms that the tree could use. Trees 
required food, just like people or any other living 
things. 

The rows down there, all along the stone wall, 
he said, were in rich ground. They hadn’t ex¬ 
hausted the plant food and so they were bearing a 
good crop. 

He went on, then, to talk about spraying, and ex¬ 
plained what each spray was intended to accomplish. 
The first in importance, he said, was the dormant 
spray. 

“Our trees pretty nearly missed that one!” whis¬ 
pered Peggy. 

The next in value was the one that you apply just 
as the petals are falling, because it controls the com- 






One Type of Box Pack 










NEW WAYS FOR OLD 221 

mon apple worm, the one that tunnels around the 
core. 

After that he talked of other sprays and their 
purpose. Then he spoke of pruning. The ques¬ 
tion of packing and marketing fruit, he said, 
would be left until after dinner. Another man 
would discuss that and would give a demonstra¬ 
tion. 

When he had finished there was a lively discus¬ 
sion. Various people asked him questions and told 
their experiences. 

“What about care of young trees?” some one 
asked. 

“You might come across the run and demonstrate 
with mine,” Uncle John laughed. 

So they all walked over to the young orchard. 
The speaker said that the grass-mulch plan would 
probably be all right there. But many orchardists 
would prefer to follow the cover-crop plan. 

“What does he mean by cover-crop plan?” said 
Jim to Peggy. 

Some one else asked the same question loudly 
enough for the speaker to hear, and he explained: 
The scheme was to keep the ground cultivated be¬ 
tween the trees, beginning the first thing in the 
spring and continuing until the middle of summer. 
Then you stopped cultivation and sowed some kind 
of a crop, such as crimson clover or rye, and let that 
grow for the rest of the summer. That was the 


222 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

cover crop. You plowed it under the next spring. 
And so on each season. 

“Is that a good plan for peaches?” asked Uncle 
John. 

“Yes,” said the speaker, “but you ought to use 
fertilizer on them, too.” 

“I guess that’s what mine need, then,” commented 
Uncle John. “They aren’t bearing well.” 

They went to look at the peach trees. On the way 
they passed a corner of the orchard behind the barn. 
The trees there were loaded with apples. Aunt 
Emily’s pullets were ranging everywhere in the or¬ 
chard. The speaker called attention to the chickens. 

“That’s a good combination,” he remarked. “The 
chickens benefit the trees and the trees furnish shade 
for the chickens. It pays to keep some chickens.” 

“How about keeping bees?” some one asked. 

“Bees are necessary in every orchard at blooming 
time,” he replied. “They carry pollen from one 
blossom to another and make the fruit start forming. 
If there aren’t enough bees in a neighborhood the 
orchardist ought to keep a few hives himself. Many 
growers do so.” 

“Will they fly far?” 

“Yes, they’ll range a long way. But you are more 
certain of having your own blossoms taken care of 
if you have your own bees right in the orchard.” 

“They’ll pay their own way,” some one remarked. 

“With good care they’ll do more than that. 


NEW WAYS FOR OLD 


223 

They’ll furnish you with all the honey you can use 
on your own table, and some to sell besides. You 
can make a profit on them at the same time that they 
are benefiting the fruit crop.” 

The most interesting part of the day to Jim and 
Peggy was the demonstration of fruit packing 



Wrapping an Apple 


That took place in the barn, after the rain had driven 
them in. 

The county agent had brought a clean, empty 
barrel, a barrel press, an empty bushel box, various 
baskets and crates, and a supply of early apples to 
work with. 

An expert from the college packed the barrel. He 
started with a smoothly placed layer at the bottom. 
On this he poured other fruit, a basketful at a time, 



224 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

lowering the basket into the barrel and turning it 
over carefully so as not to let the fruit drop from a 
distance. 

“That’s the way we did at Uncle David’s last 
year,” said Jim to Peggy. 

Then he fitted a layer of selected apples in the top 
of the barrel so that they projected a little above the 
rim. When the lid was laid on top it seemed as if 
it could not be gotten into place, but a big press 
squeezed it down. 

“Now the apples won’t get loose and rattle around 
in the barrel,” said the expert. 

In packing a box with apples he first showed 
them the various ways that the fruit could be ar¬ 
ranged, according to its size, or depending on the 
ideas of the grower. 

“Different men prefer different packs,” he said. 

Then he taught them how to wrap an apple, plac¬ 
ing a square of paper in the palm of one hand, drop¬ 
ping an apple into the middle of it with the other, 
closing the fingers so as to bring the paper up around 
the apple, and finally giving it a twist that brought 
the wrapper neatly around it: slowly, at first, so that 
they could see each move, and then so rapidly that 
it all seemed to be done in a moment. 

“That’s the way daddy says we’re going to do 
some of our apples,” said Peggy to Jim. 

“Bet you couldn’t wrap ’em like that!” 

“I’ll bet I could!” 


NEW WAYS FOR OLD 


225 

The expert showed them small boxes made of 

cardboard. 

'‘Some men have tried these,” he said. “The idea 



Fruit Is Picked While Still Firm 


is to use a smaller pack so that the apples can be car¬ 
ried home in it from the store. The regular box is 
too big for that, of course, unless the customer comes 
in his automobile. One large fruit grower has tried 
small baskets. But for most trade the best fancy 
pack that we have to-day is the regular bushel box.” 









226 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

He spoke about labels. 

“Give your farm a name/’ he said. “Something 
that is different and is easily remembered. The 
name of the place here is all right: Apple-top Farm. 
There are lots of others. 

“Then have a label made and use it on all your 
fruit packages. Use it on your letterheads, too, 
and put up a neat sign beside the road with your 
label on it. A good name and a good reputation are 
worth something in any business.” 

At three-thirty the meeting came to an end and 
everybody started for home. 

“Daddy,” said Peggy that evening, “why did the 
man say to plant something like rye in an orchard 
and then to plow it up the next spring and then to 
plant it again?” 

“You plow it in the spring,” suggested Uncle 
John, “because you want to cultivate the soil during 
the early part of the growing season. The plants 
that you plow under make the soil richer. Then you 
seed it again in July or August because that helps 
to make the trees get ready for winter. It keeps the 
soil from washing during the fall and winter and 
it keeps it from freezing so deep. Besides, you want 
a new crop to plow under in the spring, to keep en¬ 
riching the soil.” 

“Are you going to do that with our peach trees?” 

Uncle John was silent for a minute or two. 

“If we stay here I will,” he said finally. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE END OF THE YEAR 

Just as long as the barrel sprayer could be driven 
through the potato field Uncle John kept applying 
the spray every ten days to two weeks. 

The plants grew splendidly and the treatment was 
a success. There could be no doubt about that. The 
blight was kept out and the bugs had no chance to 
do any damage. 

The experiences of other farmers in the neighbor¬ 
hood were not alike. There were a few who sprayed 
only two or three times and yet happened by some 
chance not to have blight. 

“It will turn out that way sometimes,” declared 
Uncle John. “They were just lucky. That was all. 
Another time they wouldn’t be so fortunate.” 

Most fields, however, began to fail early in August 
and by the end of the month the plants looked almost 
dead. 

One of these fields, unfortunately, was Andy’s. 

“I sprayed mine, right along,” he complained. 
“But the disease seemed to get started just the 
same.” 

“Probably it was that seed that you used,” sug- 

227 


228 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

gested Uncle John. ‘‘They say the only safe way is 
to start with certified seed.” 

Even after the weather had grown cool and 
autumn was fast approaching the potato field at 
Apple-top Farm remained green. Finally, with the 
coming of frosts, the plants turned brown as they 



The Potatoes Were Saved from Blight 


should when cold weather approaches. Within a 
week all were dead. 

Some time later Andy came to help Uncle John, 
and they dug the piece. Jim and Peggy had gone to 
school, but came back in time to help pick up potatoes 
and fill the bags. 

Uncle John decided to store them for the present 
in the basement of the old barn across the road. He 


THE END OF THE YEAR 


229 


brought boards and made a rough partition, so that 
there was a sort of bin to hold them. The earth 
floor of the barn cellar made the bottom of the bin. 

On a post near by Uncle John tacked a clean 
piece of board. He fastened a pencil to it by a 
string. As they brought in a load of potatoes in 
the wagon and emptied the sacks they made a mark 
for each sackful. 

The crop was a good one. It was the best record 
that Apple-top Farm had made since the early 
broilers that brought the big price. It helped to 
balance the drouth in the garden and the poor crop 
of peaches. The potatoes were smooth and showed 
no sign of disease. The yield was heavy, almost at 
the rate of three hundred bushels to the acre. 

“All that I wish/’ Uncle John said to Aunt Emily 
when the crop was all in the bin, “is that we had 
more acres to harvest. If we had ten acres of a crop 
like that we’d be in good shape.” 

Before school began Uncle John and Jim made 
some further changes in the henhouses. The 
brooder stove they had taken out long before and 
stored in the loft of the tool house. Now they made 
additional openings in the front of the larger part, 
where the old hens had been, and took down the 
temporary partitions. Once more they gave the 
inside a good cleaning and a spraying with 
disinfectant. 

Aunt Emily’s pullets had grown to be almost as 


230 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

large as full-grown hens. They were beginning to 
lay. There were about two hundred of them, but no 
one could be positive just how many there were, for 
each time any one tried to count the number came 
out a little different. 

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Aunt Emily de¬ 
clared. “They are a good flock and they’re going to 
produce lots of eggs pretty soon.” 

Toward the end of summer the flowers that Aunt 
Emily had raised found some sale. A few of the 
people who came to buy fruit bought flowers also. 
The sales were not large. With the money received 
from the six flats sold at the beginning of the season 
the total sum more than equaled the cost of seed. 
But it was not a total that made a considerable 
source of income. 

The flowers, like the vegetables, had suffered 
badly from the drouth. Aunt Emily was confident 
that more sales could have been developed, if the 
flowers could have had a supply of water. 

“Besides, it would take time to let people know 
about them,” she added. 

The berries from the rows of bushes that Uncle 
John and the children had pruned were hurt some¬ 
what by the dry weather. Nevertheless, Jim and 
Peggy, with help from Aunt Emily, picked a good 
many quarts. There were several crates sold, and 
the return was a substantial sum to add to the 
credit of the farm. The wild berries in the pasture, 



Digging Potatoes 






THE END OF THE YEAR 


233 

and the blueberries near the rocks below the spring, 
yielded enough for the table and for canning, but 
not enough to sell. 



Canning the Surplus 


As the summer passed Aunt Emily and Peggy did 
a good deal of canning. 

“We’re going to have a supply of our own fruits 
and vegetables for next winter, whether we sell 
fresh things or not,” Aunt Emily declared. 



234 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

Steadily the rows of jars and glasses on the 
shelves in the big pantry increased. Finally, one 
day, Aunt Emily counted them. 

“How many jars do you suppose we have?” she 

asked Uncle John. 

“Give it up,” he laughed. “More than a hundred, 
probably.” 

“That isn’t a good guess,” replied Aunt Emily. 
“There are four hundred and thirty-two, big and 
little.” 

“What are you going to do with all of them?” 
Uncle John demanded. 

“There won’t be a bit more than we’ll use,” Aunt 
Emily replied. 

One day in the fall the man who had bought the 
apple crop the year before drove into the yard. He 
walked about over the farm with Uncle John and 
talked with him on the piazza afterwards. But 
Uncle John shook his head. 

“I can’t tell you to-day,” he said. “We’ll talk 
it all over to-night and I’U let you know in the 
morning.” 

After he had gone Uncle John got out a little 
memorandum book that he had kept in his pocket 
all season. There were columns of figures in it. 
These Uncle John studied for a long time. 

He was still looking them over when an automo¬ 
bile drove into the yard and a man got out of it and 
came up to Uncle John, holding out his hand. 


THE END OF THE YEAR 235 

“My name is Henry Warner,” he said. “I was 
here the day of the demonstration.” 

He sat down and talked for a few minutes. Then 
the two walked about over the farm. When he 
left Uncle John made the same statement to him that 
he had made to the apple buyer. “I can’t tell you 
to-day,” he said. ‘Til let you know in the morning.” 

Before supper Aunt Emily and Uncle John talked 
earnestly. In fact they talked so long that supper 
was late. When it was finished and they had all 
gone into the big living room Uncle John took the 
memorandum book out of his pocket and sat thumb¬ 
ing the pages. 

“Eve been figuring up how we stand with Apple- 
top Farm,” he said. “I think we’ll have to decide 
about keeping it. We’ve had a year now. So we 
can tell pretty well how we are coming out.” 

“Aren’t we going to stay?” demanded Peggy. 

“That’s what we must figure out,” replied Uncle 
John. 

“I’ve kept account of everything in this memo¬ 
randum book,” he continued. “All that we’ve spent 
and all that we’ve received. You remember we 
made out a list last winter of the tools and supplies 
we’d need. Well, leaving those things out the money 
that we’ve paid out almost exactly balances the 
money we’ve taken in.” 

“Yes, I know, but we have-,” began Peggy. 

Uncle John laughed. 



236 JIM AND PEGGY AT APPLE-TOP FARM 

“Of course we have!” he said. “That’s th° other 
side of the story. Our potatoes haven’t been sold 
yet, and they will equal the cost of the supplies that 
we’ve bought. Maybe they’ll do more than that, if 
we sell them at a good price.” 



Apple Storage as Uncle John Planned It 


“We have a lot of maple sirup to sell,” remarked 
Jim. 

“That’s true. I almost forgot that. This winter 
we must pay the interest charge on our investment,” 
continued Uncle John. “Our apple crop will meet 
that and a little over. The buyer was here to-day 
and made an offer.” 

“But you said we’d pick this year’s crop our- 




THE END OF THE YEAR 237 

selves,” objected Jim, “and put some of it into fancy 
boxes/’ 

“We will do that, if we stay. I think we could 
realize more than the buyer offered.” 

“How about our pullets?” asked Peggy. 
“They’re just beginning to lay. And all the canned 
things we’ve put up. They are worth something.” 

“Yes,” said Uncle John, “I do think we’ve made 
a fair return.” 

He was silent for a moment. 

“There was another man here to-day,” he re¬ 
sumed. “The man who came to the demonstration 
in the big automobile, Mr. Warner. He wants to 
buy Apple-top Farm.” 

“But it’s promised to us!” Jim exclaimed. 

“Yes. But he’ll buy it from us. He’s willing to 
pay us a thousand dollars more than we have to give 
for it.” 

Jim and Peggy were silent. 

Finally Peggy spoke. 

“Do you think we ought to sell it to him?” she 
asked. 

“Suppose I ask you two youngsters a question,” 
proposed Uncle John. “Do you zvant to go back to 
the city to live?” 

“No!” they both answered. 

“All right,” said Uncle John. “We’ll stay.” 












































































































































































































































































































































































































































